Let’s Make a New Three True Outcomes Metric

Last month on June 9th, the Yankees had a good win against the Twins in Minnesota. Down 7-3 early in the contest, the Yankees went on to score 7 unanswered runs to win 10-7. Joey Gallo, who has had a rough tenure with the Yankees to this point, made his mark on that game with two home runs. Looking over the boxscore, Gallo’s line looked like something only Joey Gallo is really capable of: 2 for 5 with 2 home runs and 3 strikeouts.

Seeing such an emblematic three true outcome player have such a, well, three true outcome-esque batting line begged the question: how often does something like this happen?

In an effort to address that question, I first defined a “Gallo”, which seemed like a good name given that Joey was the inspiration for this question. A Gallo, as I conceive of it, is defined as follows: a batting line wherein a hitter gets at least three plate appearances, all of which end in one of the three true outcomes.

A Golden Sombrero, wherein a hitter strikes out four times in a game, could classify as a Gallo should those at bats make up all of that player’s plate appearances. Assuming Golden Sombreros include no other plate appearances than the ones that end in a strikeout, all Golden Sombreros are Gallos (but not all Gallos are Golden Sombreros).

The first order of business was determining how often Gallos occur. Thanks to FanGraphs Splits leaderboards, that question is readily addressed: since the beginning of the 2021 season and through July 8th 2022 (~230 games), there were 62,855 occasions in which a hitter got three plate appearances in a game. Of that total, hitter batting lines resulted in some three true outcome-exclusive permutations exactly 1,490 times.

Put another way, 2.37% of qualifying batting lines in the past season and a half have been Gallos. That translates to roughly 1 Gallo every 36 batting lines; if all nine hitters in a lineup get 3 PAs for four straight games, just one time in that four-game span a Gallo might occur based on that frequency. Not terribly regular, but also not truly rare, in my subjective view.

So, who has the most Gallos in 2022? And perhaps more importantly, who has Gallos as the highest percentage of all their qualifying games? Is it one Joseph Nicholas Gallo, or have my naming decisions been overly hasty and flippant?

Lo and behold, Joey Gallo leads the pack. It should be noted that players were filtered to only include those with 30+ qualifying (3+ PA) games this season through July 8th, 2022. For something that has happened just 2.73% of the time for qualifying batting lines, these leaders particularly over-index on three true outcome-exclusive games.

Of all the three true outcomes, strikeouts (not home runs) appear in particular to be a common thread among these players’ games.

Do some players avoid Gallos in their batting lines? Absolutely. The list is in fact too long to include in a leaderboard (21 players with 30+ qualifying games in 2022 didn’t have a single Gallo), but below are 15 ranked by the number of three true outcomes they have.

This list, perhaps counterintuitively, features far more home runs than the prior leaderboard: 166 to 113. That said, these players also had a lot more qualifying games as well.

Joey Gallo’s game last month in Minnesota was a particularly interesting permutation of Gallo though; 2 home runs and 3 strikeouts. That combination makes one wonder what permutations of Gallos are most common. The table below answers that query by pulling those most common Gallos over the past 1.5 seasons.

Unfortunately, it appears that Gallos are most often poor offensive games.

Walks and strikeouts dominate the top of this board. In fact, of all Gallo permutations, Golden Sombreros are the third most common. There is a big drop-off between the fifth and sixth most common iteration, which probably not coincidentally corresponds to a home run becoming part of the equation for the first time.

What about those rarest Gallos? For context, Joey’s “2-3-0” (HR-K-BB) day in June has occurred 4 times from Opening Day 2021 through July 8th 2022. Meanwhile, in that timeframe there has been exactly one “1-5-0” day, one “3-0-1” day, and one “0-3-3” day, all of which are sufficiently strange outcomes it seems, even in this offensive landscape.

To wrap things up and feature a larger sample, Gallo% was pulled once more, but this time including games dating back to the beginning of last year to see whether Joey Gallo remained at the top of the list.

Perhaps a Gallo is a misnomer after all. Dating back to the start of last season, Patrick Wisdom in fact has a Gallo (a Wisdom?) in the highest percentage of his qualifying games (minimum 100).

For batting lines that are most often negative, it is interesting so see so many big names on this list, including Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani (and his insane 65 home runs since the beginning of 2021). This was a whimsical exercise, but an interesting one nonetheless.