On Thursday's episode of the Fantasy Baseball Podcast, we talked about Rangers third baseman Joey Gallo's first two weeks as a major league player (skip ahead to the 26-minute mark for Gallo discussion), and basically came to the conclusion that he has been nearly everything we expected so far. For Fantasy owners moving forward, however, does what we have seen from him so far change what they should expect rest of season?
If there were things we knew to expect from Gallo based on his time in the minors, they were strikeouts and home runs. This guy has true 80 power on the scouting scale, both raw and in-game, and he has given us great displays so far. After averaging one home run every 12.8 plate appearances a year ago in the minors, he has mostly kept up the pace through his first 58 trips in the majors, and they've been whoppers.
The clearest sign of his off-the-charts power came Wednesday, when he did this to a Clayton Kershaw pitch:
(At the Eye On Baseball blog, David Brown has a great post on the nine emotional stages that accompany witnessing one of Gallo's majestic blasts.)
Yeah, that Clayton Kershaw. He clubbed a 439-foot homer off Kershaw, the longest ever by a lefty off the Dodgers' MVP and Cy Young award-winning southpaw. It was the second-longest home run anyone has hit off Kershaw, and it wasn't even the longest blast of Gallo's short career. In fact, it was practically pedestrian by his standards.
Gallo's average home run has traveled 440 feet, with his shortest traveling just 423 feet -- longer than 82 percent of all homers hit in the majors this season. For some perspective, Joc Pederson currently leads the majors in average home run distance at 428 feet, a distance four of Gallo's five long balls have surpassed.
We knew Gallo could put on incredible displays of power, but it is good to see that he is undaunted by the prospect of facing off against even the most overpowering pitchers the big leagues have to offer. The question about him coming up was whether he would make enough contact for his power to play up.
In the minors, Gallo was a massive outlier for both his power and his strikeout rate. As I noted in a blog post immediately after his call-up, finding players who struck out as often as Gallo in high minors -- 37.5 percent strikeout rate at Double-A -- is rare. Even players like Mark Reynolds, Giancarlo Stanton and Jon Singleton who have been defined to varying degrees by their strikeout rates weren't on the same level Gallo was in the minors.
Basically, players who strike out as often as Gallo did in the minors generally don't make much noise as prospects. From 2011 through 2015, 22 players logged at least 200 plate appearances in Double-A while striking out at least one-third of the time; they collectively posted a .727 OPS in these seasons. These are minor-league filler types. Gallo stood out in a major way, posting a .314/.425/.636 line in Double-A before his call-up.
Gallo's strikeout rate has remained an issue in the majors as expected. He has struck out in 36.2 percent of his plate appearances, in line with both expectations and his minor-league track record. However, just like his time as a prospect, Gallo has been able to produce in spite of it because he hits the ball so hard when he does make contact.
Gallo owns a massive 58.6 percent hard-hit rate, a mark that would lead the majors if he qualified. The current leader? Giancarlo Stanton, perhaps the only player in the majors who might have more raw power than Gallo. As I showed in an earlier blog post, hard-hit average correlates strongly with HR/FB, and serves as a decent proxy for raw power. Gallo's standing here comes as little surprise then. He ranks 25th in the majors in average batted-ball velocity as well.
Gallo is swinging and missing a ton, posting a 17.9 percent swinging strike rate, which is to be expected as well. However, he has also show decent plate discipline, swinging at just 30.1 percent of pitches outside of the zone thrown his way. Opposing pitchers have already learned to avoid throwing him hittable pitches -- only 40.4 percent of pitches thrown to him have been inside the strike zone -- and Gallo has adjusted by waiting on the right pitch to hit. He's got a lot of swing-and-miss in his game, but the ability he has shown to identify and then wait on the right pitch makes me think he might be able to sustain this.
In order to have success with his strikeout rate, Gallo is going to have to be an outlier. No player who qualifies for the batting title this season has struck out in more than 33.7 percent of his trips to the plate, and you have to go back to 2013 to find a player who struck out at least 35 percent of the time; that was Chris Carter, who clubbed 29 home runs, but also hit just .223/.320/.451 in 585 plate appearances. Fortunately, everything in Gallo's history suggests he is an outlier. His ability to consistently post respectable batting averages despite his strikeout rate hints at the type of contact he is producing, and his time in the majors has thus far reflected that.
We're still very early in Gallo's major-league career, but everything he has done so far makes him look exactly like the guy we saw in the minors. 14 games isn't much to go on, but it isn't nothing, especially if it simply continues a pattern we have seen at a different level. Put simply, this guy can flat out hit, regardless of the strikeout rate. But we have to acknowledge some kind of flame-out potential, because that is what major-league history tells us can happen with players who strike out this much.
The biggest question surrounding Gallo's Fantasy value moving forward is his exact role. Gallo's time in the majors was initially tied to Adrian Beltre's recovery from a thumb injury, and there is still no official timetable for Beltre's return. However, the Rangers have already begun putting him in the outfield, another way to keep his bat in the lineup. This leaves Fantasy players in an interesting spot, because he can clearly be a big-time contributor if he stays up, but the risk in his approach and potential demotion mean you have to at least consider the possibility of selling high.
However, if he keeps hitting like this, Gallo is going to be the kind of player you bend over backwards to keep in the lineup.
