In his three best full seasons in the majors, Joey Gallo averaged 40 home runs, 87 walks and 205 strikeouts while barely batting above .200.
Joey Gallo sets up Twins for ultimate feast or famine season in 2023
The slugger strikes out a lot, walks a lot and hits a lot of balls hard when he's at his best. When he's at his worst, he does a lot less of that last one.
December 19, 2022 at 4:58PM
That's the type of hitter the Twins hope they are getting for $11 million in 2023, which should tell you plenty about their thinking already: Bosses Derek Falvey and Thad Levine still revere the home run and on-base potential as much larger pluses than the downsides of striking out and having a lot of completely empty trips to the plate.
Gallo at his best is a feast-or-famine hitter, and the Twins' acquisition of Gallo late last week is a feast-or-famine move — not just for the nature of the best of Gallo, but also for the worst version of him that we saw in 2022.
Splitting time between the Yankees and Dodgers — two high-rolling contenders who clearly saw value in Gallo — the 29-year-old outfielder hit just .160 and struck out in almost 40% of his plate appearances. If the Twins get that version of Gallo, they're going to look like fools.
You'd be hard-pressed to find a wilder swing, which makes this Twins offseason so far equal parts underwhelming and hard to quantify — something Patrick Reusse and I talked about on Monday's Daily Delivery podcast.
The Twins missed out on Carlos Correa, though Reusse was never convinced retaining Correa was a realistic proposition.
They signed Christian Vazquez to solidify their catching depth chart and added the left-handed hitting Gallo to a cadre of outfielders who hit from that side.
While Gallo's arrival almost certainly will mean the departure of Max Kepler — a frustrating hitter in his own right — it's still hard to imagine the Twins fielding a top-half of the AL offense.
Perhaps Gallo will benefit from MLB's new shift rules — teams must employ two infielders on both sides of second base starting in 2023, a boon for a player like Gallo who hit just 10.2% of his balls in play to the opposite field last season. And he is a two-time Gold Glove winner.
In his career at the plate, though, Gallo's career numbers are almost identical to ex-Twin Miguel Sano. In other words, get ready for highly volatile 2023 season.
When he was hired after the disastrous 2016 season to reshape the Twins, Derek Falvey brought a reputation for identifying and developing pitching talent. It took a while, but the pipeline we were promised is now materializing.
