With extended opportunity, Rangers' Joey Gallo starting to shine
OAKLAND -- Texas Rangers left-hander Martin Perez offers a cautionary tale for those ready to declare his teammate Joey Gallo a bust.
Perez was an up-and-coming pitcher in the Rangers system in 2011 when he watched Chris Davis tear up the league at Class AAA Round Rock, but struggle to carry that performance to the big club.
In July of that year the Rangers finally gave up on Davis, then 25, and traded him to the Baltimore Orioles. He has led the majors in home runs in two of the last four years while averaging 41 a season.
“He was up and down, struck out 150 times,’’ Perez remembered. “It took him time to mature, but now he’s got a huge contract, hits 40 home runs and drives in a bunch of runs.’’
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Like Davis, the 6-5, 235-pound Gallo has shown an all-or-nothing tendency at the plate, with voluminous amounts of strikeouts accompanying his sometimes awe-inspiring home runs.
As a 20-year-old, he hit a monster blast and earned MVP honors in the 2014 Futures Game at Target Field in Minneapolis. The next year, he made a smashing debut with the Rangers by going 3-for-4 with a 430-foot home run and four RBI, becoming the 20th player in a century to compile at least seven total bases in his first game.
Such feats only served to fuel the hype surrounding Gallo, a supplemental-round pick in the 2012 draft who was a Little League teammate of Bryce Harper and a teenage friend of Kris Bryant while growing up in Las Vegas.
But while those two young sluggers have won the last two National League MVP awards, Gallo still hasn’t figured out how to make enough contact to parlay his prodigious power into consistent production. In mostly intermittent action with Texas over parts of three seasons, he has registered a .177 average with 10 home runs while striking out a staggering 46% percent of the time in 68 games.
Those stats have generated an avalanche of criticism on social media, even though Gallo is only 23, younger than such renowned young hitters as Kyle Schwarber and Trevor Story. He eventually stopped looking at his Twitter and Instagram feeds – no small feat for anybody from his generation – and focused on enjoying the game.
“With the expectations, people kind of get disappointed, and if you don’t come up and explode and be an All-Star right out of the gate, then they’re like, ‘Well, he sucks,’ or, ‘He’s not going to be anything,’’’ Gallo said. “People expect things early, but they don’t realize how young you are and that there’s so much time to learn and grow.’’
Such a notion may have been distorted by the near-instant success of players like Harper, Bryant, Mike Trout and Gallo’s own teammate and friend Nomar Mazara, who batted .266 with 20 homers as a 21-year-old rookie last season.
The more traditional path to the majors includes a number of fits and starts, not unlike those experienced by Davis and now Gallo, who blasted 42 homers between Class A and AA in 2014 and 25 in 102 games at AAA last season but has batted just .240 each of the last two years in the minors.
With the lingering calf injury that has kept regular third baseman Adrian Beltre out of the lineup all season, Gallo is getting an extended look by the Rangers, with mixed results so far.
After hitting his third home run of the season in Wednesday’s 9-1 loss to the Oakland Athletics, Gallo ranks second on the Rangers in homers (tied), RBI and walks. On the other hand, he’s sporting a batting average of just .188 and has struck out 20 times in 56 plate appearances.
Focusing less on those numbers, especially the whiffs, has been a point of emphasis this season for Gallo, who’s not a brain-dead hacker but does take big swings that often miss. According to Fangraphs.com, his contact rate of 65.7% ranks fifth-lowest in the league.
“The kind of player I am, I go up to the plate and I’m looking to do damage every at-bat,’’ Gallo said. “When I get in trouble is when I go up to the plate and I’m thinking of not striking out or just trying to put the ball in play. My thoughts kind of get in the way of my swing and things just don’t work out for me.’’
The Rangers, off to a 5-10 start after winning the AL West each of the last two years, are seeing better at-bats out of Gallo. For one, he finally found a way to battle back from an 0-2 count, managing a couple of hits after starting his career 0-for-42 with 38 strikeouts when he fell in that hole.
Gallo’s also more comfortable in the clubhouse, having made the team out of spring training for the first time – in large measure because of Beltre’s injury – and feeling now like he belongs at this level.
General manager Jon Daniels said Gallo may have turned a corner in his ability to handle the game’s highs and lows during a winter in which he traveled to Texas and Arizona for workouts, and even played winter ball in Venezuela briefly before a hamstring injury cut short his stint.
“In sports in general, maybe baseball even more so, we look for that instant gratification. We’re so apt so make quick judgments, and then you look and you realize a guy is 22 years old, 23 years old,’’ Daniels said, adding that Gallo’s development continues apace.
“I think it’s just going to come naturally. The more reps, the more at-bats, the more playing time, the more he sees pitchers up here, he’s just going to improve with time.’’
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