The Joey Gallo experience in pinstripes hasn’t been very successful so far.
That’s not refutable. He posted a 95 wRC+ in 228 PA as a Yankee, but that was only 58 games. He also started to see things click in September when he had a 13-game stretch where he slashed .263/.356/.816 with 7 homers and a 200 wRC+, but then he suffered that neck injury and it seemed to have set him back.
Before coming over to New York, he had a 139 wRC+ in 388 PA for the Rangers and was on pace for a 7-win season. Those are MVP candidate numbers.
He’s not the most aesthetically pleasing baseball player. I’ll admit it. The regular baseball fan probably doesn’t enjoy a player that strikes out a bunch and doesn’t put the ball in play often. That’s fine with me.
However, he hits a lot of homers (38 in 2021, multiple 40-homer seasons in his career), plays fantastic defense (15 DRS in 2021, also won a Gold Glove), walks a good amount (18.0% walk rate in 2021, and gets on base at a solid clip (.351 OBP in 2021).
“But he only had a .199 AVG! He sucks.”
I understand that nobody wants to continue to hear that a walk is just as valuable a single. Sure, they both help the OBP the same amount but not all singles are created equal, right? I get that.
So, let me pose this question: What is the difference between a bases-empty single and a bases-empty walk? Absolutely nothing. There’s nothing else involved. Nobody on base. They’re the same thing. I think we can come to an agreement on that, right?
Joey Gallo was 99-for-498 this season… a .199 AVG. Here’s the catch: 47 of Gallo’s 111 walks in 2021 were with the bases empty.
Since a walk and a single are the exact same thing with the bases empty, let’s add 47 hits and 47 AB to Gallo’s season AVG.
Calculator goes brrrr… that adds up to a .268 AVG.
Obviously the slugging percentage would change but for this exercise let’s keep it the same. Would a .268/.351/.458 hitter look more aesthetically pleasing? That’s Joey Gallo.
“But he led the majors with 213 strikeouts this season.”
I hate to break it to everyone, but that doesn’t matter. 6 players in 2021 had at least 180+ strikeouts, and all of them had a league average or better OPS+. 19 hitters had at least 160+ strikeouts in 2021, and 17 of them had a league average or better OPS+.
(I’m using OPS+ because FanGraphs doesn’t have a “Play Index” like good ole’ Baseball-Reference does, so don’t judge me, stat nerds.)
It simply does not matter. As the other players in baseball have showed. Striking out a lot doesn’t matter because almost all of the time it doesn’t hinder production. With Joey Gallo, it certainly hasn’t in his career.
In 2019, Joey Gallo struck out 38.4% of the time and still posted a 144 wRC+. If he’s walking, getting on base, and hitting homers, he’s going to be a productive hitter.
In every season he’s posted a .250 ISO or better (2017, 2018, 2019, 2021), he’s also posted an OPS above .800. In all of those seasons, he posted a strikeout rate of 34% or higher. It clearly doesn’t hinder him — so look for a different outlet for why “he isn’t good,” which would be false, I’m afraid.
I wasn’t going to originally do this, but I love chaos.
Let’s repeat the walks exercise with strikeouts. As I mentioned, Joey Gallo struck out 213 times in 616 PA in 2021, which equates to a 34.6% strikeout rate.
All outs aren’t created equal, sure, I believe that, but all outs with nobody on certainly are. There’s zero difference between a ground-ball out, a fly ball out, and a strikeout with nobody on base. One doesn’t weigh more than the other.
121 of Gallo’s 213 strikeouts were with nobody on base. That’s 56.8% of his strikeouts. Let’s say, because I can’t please everyone, a third of those weren’t strikeouts… so about 40 of them. Take away 40 of those strikeouts, turn them into just batted ball outs, and that’s 173 strikeouts in 616 PA. That would be a 28.1% strikeout rate.
NL MVP finalist Fernando Tatis Jr. struck out 28.0% of the time in 2021. Fun stuff!
Alright, let’s dive into what went wrong for Joey Gallo in pinstripes. If you have zero interest in numbers, you’re probably going to hate this, so bare with me.
Gallo is someone that doesn’t put the ball on the ground. In fact, he had a 32.6% ground ball rate and a 50.7% fly ball rate in 2021 with the Rangers and Yankees, having a lower ground ball rate (27.1%) and higher fly ball rate (58.3%) in the Bronx than he did in Texas (35.6% GB%, 46.7% FB%).
Let’s dive a bit deeper and take a look at the balls he hit off the ground… in the air.
As you can see, he hit the same amount of pop-ups, but his fly ball rates (51.3% to 64.2%) and line drive rates (29.6% to 16.4%) both fluctuated, as his average launch angle went from 37.9 degrees to 41.8 degrees — not that big of a difference.
The line drive drop could be a big thing. Hitting line drives are the best thing you can do as a hitter, as they warrant the best result. All line drives in 2021 accumulated to a .637 AVG and 1.536 OPS. Fly balls are obviously still great, which Gallo did a great job in producing. All fly balls in 2021 accumulated to a .281 AVG, but a 1.151 OPS.
Hit fly balls and line drives. It’s simple.
As I mentioned in my Gary Sánchez article: “I want to say this first before the “launch angle is bad” crowd voices their opinions. Every batted ball has a launch angle, that’s just how the world works. A ball hit straight into the ground will have a negative launch angle and a ball popped up will have a pretty extreme launch angle. You can fill in the rest.”
The fly ball rate increase and launch angle is definitely intriguing, but there’s still way more to dive into. Something people don’t realize is how good Joey Gallo was in 2021 at pulling baseballs.
Among left-handed hitters with at least 105 pulled balls in play in 2021, Joey Gallo was 6th in all of baseball with a 1.303 OPS on pulled balls. Gallo is nestled in there between Austin Meadows and Jared Walsh.
People always love to say “this guy is perfect for Yankee Stadium” because a player is a lefty, but Gallo literally is perfect. His numbers even went up on pulled balls when he joined the Yankees, posting a 1.431 OPS on pulled balls. That 1.431 OPS on pulled balls is over 200 points higher than what it was in Texas (1.223).
However, his numbers on pulled balls in the air did go down once he left the Rangers and came to the Yankees, but a 2.026 OPS on pulled balls in the air is still pretty solid. That would’ve still been within the top-10/15 lefties in that category.
Gallo excelled on literally any ball put in the air in Texas, and it didn’t matter to what part of the field. He hit .470 with a 1.661 OPS on balls in the air with the Rangers, but his numbers dropped to a .318 AVG with a 1.329 OPS with the Yankees.
His pulled balls in the air numbers drop as a Yankee aren’t really that alarming. He had a 2.289 OPS as a Ranger on those and 2.026 OPS on those as a Yankee. For example: Giancarlo Stanton is in the middle of those numbers at 2.105.
But again, there’s that launch angle jump (30.7 degrees to 36.2 degrees), but when you’re a left-handed hitter playing at Yankee Stadium, a stadium that’s 314 feet down the right field line, that will still play.
Alright, here is the juicy part. His drop in balls in balls the air in total was probably in large point to his drop in production on balls to other parts of the field, and especially when you put the ball in the air and it wasn’t pulled.
That’s a pretty drastic difference. Things were even worse when he put the ball in the air and wasn’t pulling the baseball with the Yankees. That launch angle increase also stayed constant that he had pulling the ball.
So what’s to make of all of this? I think that Gallo got too concentrated on hitting balls over the right field wall and he’s been putting more of an emphasis on putting the ball in the air to do so.
Yes, that’s what Joey Gallo does best: hitting homers. There’s really no reason to try so hard and let his swing arc get changed because of it. He just needs to get his game back to his Texas days in 2022 and he should be just fine.
Gallo doesn’t have to become this major line drive hitter, because that’s not what he is and what he was in Texas. He just needs to find his groove, and the small sample size he had in the Bronx in 2021 shouldn’t be indicative of what he truly is as a hitter.
I’m sure his numbers, once he gets comfortable in a second year in pinstripes, will start to come back to the norm, but at least some of this is explainable with his increase in launch angle and lack of production when not pulling the baseball.
Joey Gallo’s first impression was definitely not one to write home about and I can totally understand ill sentiments from fans. He didn’t produce and people take these first impressions seriously.
Again, we have to understand: It wasn’t even 60 games! If he fails to produce in the first half in 2022 (whenever that starts), then maybe we can revisit things with him. Don’t forget: Gallo has been a 117-wRC+ hitter since the start of the 2017 season and 121-wRC+ hitter since the start of the 2019 season. That’s pretty decent!
Also, he’s projected to have a 123 wRC+ hitter, which means he’s better projected than guys like Xander Bogaerts, Eloy Jimenez, Marcus Semien, J.D. Martinez, and Michael Brantley.
Let’s quickly go back to Gallo’s numbers this year…
That 26.6-degree average launch angle was in line with his 26.8-degree launch angle in 2020, the shortened-COVID season where he posted an 87 wRC+. In 2017-2019 and his 2021 time with the Rangers, his average launch angle was 21.9 degrees.
Now do you get why the increase in launch angle increase matters?
Joey Gallo doubters can continue to hate on him. Whatever. I’m not here to tell you what to think. However, if you’re open to convincing: His struggles, as explained in the over-1700 words above, are explainable and can be improved.