In the wake of the trade deadline, the Yankees’ acquisition of Andrew Benintendi from the Kansas City Royals all but guaranteed that Joey Gallo’s days in New York are over.
A left-handed power bat like Gallo would be a welcome addition to the New York Yankees’ lineup, which already had Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, D.J. LeMahieu, and Gleyber Torres, all of whom pitch from the right side of the plate. Things began to go awry as soon as he arrived. OPS plummeted. from 869 to.707 throughout 58 games in 2021, from the Rangers to the Yankees. It’s dismal.621 through 81 games in 2022.
Gallo told The Athletic’s Lindsey Adler that he realizes the criticism he has received from Yankee fans is well-deserved as he prepares to leave the Bronx.
Gallo said to Adler, “I’m sorry.” For the rest of my life, I’m going to have to deal with this.” It will be difficult. I didn’t do well, and I didn’t meet my standards. This is a difficult pill to take.
As Gallo recognized, New York is a difficult location to play because the expectations are great and poor play immediately sours the audience.
The pinstripes didn’t work out for Gallo. The Sporting News examines the data.
The Expectations
It was clear to the Yankees that Gallo was not a future hitting champion when they made the deal for him.
After seven seasons, Gallo had a batting average of.223, which would have been the second-best in his career after the.253 he had in 2019. Gallo’s.210 batting average that year was an exception; he hadn’t done so in any of his previous seasons.
Gallo, on the other hand, was a three-out-of-three hitter. The slugging percentage had never dropped below.490 save for one year in 2020, when he had 40 home runs in 2017. He constantly walked at a rate of at least 12% to keep his on-base percentage above.300, despite having a strikeout rate of over 35%.
Aaron Judge and Joey Gallo now qualify as shortstops for your fantasy team: pic.twitter.com/OG1JLiGrOn
— Bryan Hoch (@BryanHoch) July 22, 2022
Faced with pitches from the right side, he was at his best. Gallo has a.835 OPS and.501 slugging percentage versus right-handed pitchers from 2017 to 2020.
According to Stathead, the Yankees’ left-handed hitters against right-handed pitchers ranked 18th in baseball, with a slugging percentage of.438 and an OPS of.776 during that period (14th). These are the Bronx Bombers, after all, and this was a clear flaw in an otherwise strong lineup. So trading for a few prospects to address that issue wasn’t a bad idea.
The Reality
The issue rapidly arose when New York realized that it was getting a batter who tended to go cold more frequently than it had anticipated.
There have been two periods of at least 16 consecutive games in which Gallo has had at least one strikeout, which is the most in MLB. In terms of swinging-strike rates and plate discipline, he grew worse.
Soft contact, a decrease in hard hits, and an increase in infield fly balls are all signs that a power hitter is in trouble. Batter swinging outside the strike zone more and making less contact out there is also not a good indicator.
Nothing new about Gallo’s pursuit of the strike zone. His whiff rate has been in the top 5% of all entire seasons since his debut in 2017 except for one when he was in the fifth 5% of all full seasons.
However, his average exit velocity remained among the best until 2022. In both 2017 and 2018, he scored in the 99th and 100th percentiles, respectively. On his way to the 85th percentile by 2020. He scored in the 87th percentile in 2021.
In the year 2022? He’s in the middle of the pack, at the 35% mark. Although he has a 98 percent barrel rate, he hasn’t been able to drive the ball as far when he isn’t using the barrel.
Many factors have contributed to the fact that he has become more inconsistent in his ability to smash home runs than he was in the past. Since moving to New York, Gallo has had seven streaks of at least seven games without a home run, including a career-long 23-game skid from September 22, 2021, to April 24, 2022, according to Stathead.
He had 10 such streaks in 515 games between 2017 and July 2021, when he was traded from the team. He’s played in 139 games for the Yankees.
Gallo has a good chance of reversing the trend, however. Even though he’s only 28 years old, he walks a lot, has a high exit velocity, and can still drive the ball when he gets on base.
Gallo is the first to confess that things haven’t worked out in New York. Perhaps he simply needs a change of scenery and a break from the intense limelight of New York City.
‘When I look at my stats, I think I’ve done better than what they show,’ Gallo said to Adler. It’s possible that I could have done a better job of keeping track of mechanical issues. In many ways, baseball is an oddball sport.
In baseball, it’s easy to get into the habit of doing something slightly incorrectly, and before you know it, it’s become second nature. Just a nagging feeling that “something’s off” in this place.
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