Joey Gallo says he wants to stay with the New York Yankees, but he really wants to be in the place where he could strike out four times a game, and bat .165 without having to hear about either.
He wants to be with the team that drafted him, developed him, hurried him, and accepted him. He wants to be with the Texas Rangers.
Barring something exceptional, that’s not going to happen.
The former face of the Rangers, and their horrible rebuild, was traded by the club last July to the Yankees and he’s reportedly on the trading block again.
According to people familiar with the Rangers’ mid-summer interests, Joey Gallo is not among them. They traded him for a reason.
If they put him back on this team, it’s a sign they are more serious about being comfortable than they are winning.
New York is the last place on earth he should have gone. No player in baseball today was more poorly cut for Yankee pinstripes more than Joey Gallo.
As expected, Gallo went to the Yankees and his game has not been well received.
The Yankees are the best team in baseball, on pace to win a record number of regular-season games, despite the presence of Gallo in the lineup.
When the Yankees traded infielders Josh Smith, Ezequiel Duran, Trevor Hauver and pitcher Glenn Otto to Texas for Joely Rodriguez and Gallo, the plan was for the ex-Rangers power hitter to push New York to the World Series.
The Yankees reached the 2021 postseason, and lost to the Boston Red Sox in the wild card game, 6-2. Gallo was 0-for-4 with a strikeout.
Even before that performance Yankees manager Aaron Boone had to defend, and rationalize, Gallo’s place in the batting order, or everyday lineup.
The need for those explanations and rationalizations have grown more so this season, up to and including one from the Son of The Boss, Hal Steinbrenner.
In a recent Zoom Q&A with New York Yankees reporters, the Yankees owner said “he still ‘expects great things’ from Joey Gallo,” according to Jon Heyman of The New York Post.
Gallo can only thank several Gods for Hal, for the son is nothing like the father.
If George Steinbrenner was still alive today and running the Yankees, he would have verbally berated Gallo so often, and with such ferocity, that he would have asked to be traded to Ukraine.
Gallo’s statistics are so bad they look like he should be sent to Double A rather than be traded for big league players.
In 240 plate appearances this season, he is batting .166 with 10 home runs and 21 RBIs. He has struck out 92 times.
Other than home runs, the two stats Gallo defenders could always point to were his on-base, and slugging, percentages; this season, those are .288 and .341, respectively.
In case you don’t speak baseball nerd, those stats are code for “Trash” and “Barfy” for a big league hitter.
The problem is Joey Gallo is not a big league hitter.
He is the big league power hitter who never learned how to hit.
He is 28 years old, and he has been in the big leagues since 2015.
This is not only an indictment on Gallo, but also of baseball’s current philosophy that preaches power over contact.
When you do that, you get Joey Gallo.
Had Joey Gallo ever learned, or even been asked, to hit the ball to the middle, even a little bit, he would not be in this position.
Instead, the former first-round draft pick who is a wonderful guy, and a pro, finds himself in the awkward position of being a part of the best team in baseball knowing he may soon be traded just because that team wants him gone.
Meanwhile, his old team is not on level with the Yankees, but they won this trade.
Maybe not to the level the Rangers won the 2007 trade of Mark Teixeira to the Atlanta Braves that brought back future key pieces to consecutive World Series teams, but it’s a win.
Smith and Otto are both currently with the big league club, and Duran is back in the minors after a brief stint in Arlington. All three could be part of the Rangers next season (Hauver is in A ball.)
The other player in this trade, pitcher Joely Rodriguez, was traded by the Yankees to the Mets in April.
The Rangers collected a few big leaguers while the Yankees struck out.
There is no joy in watching a guy like Joey Gallo struggle in New York, or potentially anywhere else in the big leagues.
But he has the same problem in New York as he did in Texas: he’s just not a big league hitter.
