clock menu more-arrow no yes mobile

Filed under:

Pay Attention To Joey Gallo

Not everyone is a prospectphile, and that's just fine. There's enough fun on the Major League level with the Rangers right now that ignoring anyone not named Olt or Profar is justified.

↵

Just in case you aren't paying attention, though, let me quickly point out what supplemental draft pick Joey Gallo is doing to the Arizona League. Rather, let Ben Badler do so at Baseball America.

↵
↵

"He hits it like nobody I’ve ever seen before as an 18-year-old kid," Arizona League Rangers manager Corey Ragsdale said. "He’s got very good bat speed. He’s obviously a big, strong kid. I mean, he hit a ball (on Monday) that went probably 470 feet. I’m not lying. Over the berm. It was just a huge, huge home run. He just squared it up, but the thing with him is he doesn’t have to square it up. I’ve seen him topspin a ball and it got out very easily. We play in spring training stadiums here too, so it’s not like he’s playing in small stadiums or anything like that. He hits them out to all fields, he doesn’t have to pull them; he can go over the batter’s eye in center field. He’s a big, strong kid with good leverage who squares balls up. That makes for some long fly balls."

↵
↵

Gallo is absolutely annihilating baseballs right now. His isolated power is a hilarious .500, leading the Arizona League by 137 points. He also leads in weighted Runs Above Average with 20.1, and his 200 wRC+ ranks third in the AZL. One of the guys in front of him is 22, and no one behind him is particularly close.

↵

More excitingly, he sports a 20.3% walk rate (fourth in the league). It's one thing to slug baseballs violently when you're 17; it's another thing entirely to do so while displaying a fantastic batting eye.

↵

There's a negative in there:

↵
↵

Gallo still has plenty of work to do in the field. In 28 games at third base, he’s already committed 10 errors. Gallo has plenty of arm strength—he was clocked as high as 98 mph off the mound in high school—but with his size and lack of range, it’s questionable whether he can stay at the position.

↵
↵

. . . but an obvious positive right behind it:

↵
↵

Then again, his offense may end up being good enough to carry him wherever he goes.

↵
↵

It's early in the young man's career, but you can go ahead and get excited about another bright star in Texas's galaxy of future talent.

Photographs by jamesbrandon, jdtornow, phlezk, flygraphix, mcdlttx, tomasland, and literalbarrage used in background montage under Creative Commons. Thank you.