Will the Real Joey Gallo Please Stand Up

Joey Gallo, now several seasons into his Major League career and still just 26, has felt like a known commodity for years. He has proved himself to be a capable Major League regular, an All-Star, and a poster child of the so-called three true outcomes. However, from the time he was drafted 39th overall in 2012, his player profile was a polarizing one. His raw power was supplemented by considerable arm strength and deceptive speed, but his proclivity to swing-and-miss has proven to be an enduring trademark as he’s established himself in the Major Leagues.

While many might point exclusively to his injury-truncated 2019 campaign as evidence of his true potential and value, Gallo had in fact been rather valuable for two seasons prior. Between 2017 and 2018, Gallo hit 81 home runs, ran the bases well, bounced around the defensive spectrum from third to first to left to right, and represented above average production. A player defined by extremes, Gallo mitigated his strikeout rates and consistently underwhelming BABIP figures with 80-grade power and consistently high (>10%) walk rates.

To put Gallo’s distinctive track record into context, the table below ranks players from 2015 onward (with at least 1500 plate appearances) by the percentage of their plate appearances ending in one of the three true outcomes.

Since the time he was promoted to the Major Leagues, Gallo’s plate appearances have ended in one of the three true outcomes nearly 4% more than the next closest player with qualifying PAs. Amongst this 15-player leaderboard, he has struck out the most too, although Miguel Sanó is not far off. Of course, playing into the hands of the three true outcomes isn’t a precursor for success. Mike Zunino has hit .199 since 2015 with a 82 OPS+; Chris Davis‘s struggles have been well-chronicled and he has limped to a cumulative 96 OPS+ over the same stretch. More than anyone else, Gallo’s success hinges on the ratio of these three outcomes, which together make up nearly three-fifths of his plate appearances.

Being a three true outcome type of player strips some of the randomness out of one’s performance, in part by removing opponents’ defensive prowess from the equation, lessening the importance of BABIP, etc. Yet despite such a consistently extreme profile, Gallo’s performance has been anything but stable. To illustrate this variance in performance, below is Gallo’s career 15-game running average wRC+.

Gallo is, more often than not, a well above league average offensive player. That said, he also has experienced several severe valleys in his career at the plate. In fact, Gallo’s 15-game rolling wRC+ has been below 100 during more than 41% of the time to this point in his career. Finding ways to rediscover his approach at the plate and therefore foreshorten those rough stretches would do a lot for Gallo’s production as a whole.

In the last two years, Gallo broke from his 2017-18 mold and produced one elite campaign (2019) and another marked by regression (2020). Shortened by injury and the pandemic, respectively, 2019 and 2020 might represent two versions of Gallo, his ceiling and floor. Below are a couple tables that delve a bit deeper into those performances.

There are a couple key takeaways from the above. First, Gallo has actually lessened his swinging strike percentage each year he has appeared in the Major Leagues, no small feat. Despite his struggles in 2020, he was making contact more often than ever too. Interestingly, pitchers were filling the zone more often than they have in the past facing him, although they still employed non-fastballs more often than not overall. In short, he was pitched at least somewhat similarly in 2020 as he always has been, but managed to improve his rate of contact.

That contact wasn’t exactly better quality though, according to FanGraphs’ StatCast metrics.

While still well above average, Gallo’s quality of contact took a bit of a dive in 2020. His average exit velocity of 91.2 mph represented a ~3 mph season-over-season dip and fell out of the top 25 for qualifying hitters in 2020. Correspondingly, his barrel percentage was nearly halved.

Meanwhile, his average launch angle rose 4 full degrees. Average launch angle can be a misleading metric, as the variance for that figure might be more telling in the case of high-degree popups or low-degree chopped ground balls. From 2019 to 2020 though, Gallo’s infield pop fly percentage actually decreased slightly, by 0.2 degrees. Rather, that jump in average launch angle is reaffirmed by Gallo’s GB/FB ratio, which moved from .58 in 2019 to .48 in 2020; Gallo hit more balls in the air than he has before in his career. Was this adjustment due to playing in a larger home ballpark? Or in response to the relentless shift employed against him? It is tough to say, but the shift certainly didn’t positively influence Gallo’s BABIP, which plummeted from .368 in 2019 (easily a career high) to .240 in 2020, and thus harming his overall line.

Given the wide range of performance to this point, it’s tough to really pin down who Gallo is. Is this a player whose all-or-nothing statistical profile undercuts his on-base capabilities, depresses his BABIP, and lowers his ceiling? Or is this someone whose generational power tool and lesser emphasized secondary skillset provide him with a floor that is higher than the vast majority of his peers?

I for one believe he is something closer to the latter. Gallo’s athleticism and the fact that he will be playing exclusively right field full time in 2021 go a long way in arriving at this conclusion. Additionally, his rough 2020 season was defined by some statistical career outliers. While he may never hit .260 in a regular length season, Joey Gallo has shown an ability to raise other aspects of his game. Going forward, should he find a way to avoid elongated slumps at the plate, Gallo seems to have a good opportunity to settle into a level of production between that of his 2017/18 seasons and his 2019 breakout campaign.