The Most Interesting Man in The Minors

6/13/2014 The Most Interesting Man in the Minors
http://grantland.com/features/joey-gallo-texas-rangers-fascinating-prospect/?print=1 1/10
MLB
The Most Interesting Man in the Minors
Last year, Rangers prospect Joey Gallo posted a Texas-size strikeout rate. This year,
hes making more contact and maintaining a historic home run pace. Oh, and he hits
the ball harder than Miguel Cabrera. So is this Power Ranger a star or a minor league
mirage?
BY BEN LINDBERGH ON JUNE 12, 2014
In an appearance on MLB Network earlier this year, Braves senior adviser John Hart echoed the
sentiment that an army of anonymous front-office types has embraced: Power is at a premium in
Major League Baseball today. The industrys hot pursuit of slugging stems from a reduction in scoring;
while power hitters arent disproportionately valuable during low-offense eras (relative to, say, guys
who get on base), its hard not to notice when 36 homers leads the National League. Until teams adjust
to the new normal, power will seem especially precious, and executives will crave it almost as much as
Frank Underwood does. And if GMs are hankering especially hard for someone who can hit the ball
over the fence, then Rangers prospect Joey Gallo must be making them break the commandment
about not coveting thy neighbors extra-base hits.
Gallos power has set him apart since the days when he batted cleanup behind Bryce Harper on club
travel teams. He set state home run records in high school, tagged a name-brand pitching prospect
with one of the longest home runs in Petco Park history at age 17, and led the minors with 40 often
majestic round-trippers last season. When you see him hit something, you wont forget, says Justin
Mashore, the Rangers Triple-A hitting coach, who tutored Gallo at multiple minor league levels from
2012 to 2013. Youll tell your grandkids about when you saw him hit those home runs that everybody
talks about.
That home run pace hasnt slowed this season: Gallo had mashed 23 homers while posting a
.320/.459/.745 line across two levels. His superhuman hitting earned him a June 8 bump from Single-
A to Double-A, where he has already delivered walk-off homer heroics. Gallos breakout has been the
silver lining in the Rangers lost season, and he could be bashing balls into light towers in a big league
ballpark near you next year. Prior to Opening Day, however, no players future seemed more uncertain.
Given Gallos success this season, it seems curious that the 20-year-old, left-handed-hitting third
baseman barely cracked Baseball Prospectuss preseason Top 101 Prospects list in January, coming in
95th overall and seventh in the Rangers system. His scouting reports exhibited at least some of the
hallmarks of a much higher-ranked player. Jason Parks, who produced BPs rankings, graded Gallos
Overall Future Potential, or OFP the best possible outcome for the player as a 70 on the 20-80
scouting scale, giving Gallo a perennial all-star ceiling that only 31 of the other top 101 prospects
possessed. In that respect, Gallo surpassed several players who finished in the top 30, including some
whove caused a stir this season, such as Marcus Stroman, George Springer, and Gregory Polanco.
Gallos power, his offensive calling card, got an 80 grade, which only two other prospects could
claim: Cubs shortstop Javier Baez and Twins third baseman Miguel Sano, who ranked fourth and 14th,
respectively, on the top 101 list. Below Billy Hamilton, whose elite speed propelled him to 49th place,
top-of-the-scale tools were scarce; Gallos pop was one of only two 80 tools on the bottom half of the
list, along with Braves catcher Christian Bethancourts arm.
Gallo fell as far as he did despite that great strength because of his equally great weakness: making
contact. As Parks noted, Gallos swing-and-miss was also 80-grade, which threatened to limit his elite
power potential. As a result, Gallos realistic role was a 40, the lowest of any player on the list. If a
70 grade spells top prospect, a 40 screams Quadruple-A player someone who might mash in
the minors, but whose stats seem unlikely to hold up against high-level pitching. No other player in the
top 101 had a three-grade gap between his pie-in-the-sky projection and his realistic-role projection.
Its not easy to untangle any players future, but Gallos in particular looked like a Gordian knot.
In general, scouts do a better job of projecting prospects than do purely stats-based systems, but in
some cases the diminutive Dustin Pedroias, for instance human evaluators can be deceived by a
players appearance in ways that a computer cant. Gallos 6-foot-5, 235-pound frame is nearly
Giancarlo Stantonsize, so he was never in danger of being underestimated because of his build. Yet
PECOTA, Baseball Prospectuss Nate Silverdeveloped projection system, couldnt draw upon its
dispassionate algorithms to cut through the bias and lay bare the abilities beneath. In Gallos case,
PECOTA was just as uncertain as the scouts.
According to PECOTA, Gallos most comparable player prior to the 2014 season was Stanton, the
Marlins outfielder who hits home runs farther than anyone else; his second comp was Sano. Gallos
third-closest comp, though, wasnt quite as encouraging: Cody Johnson, the Braves failed 2006 first-
round pick. Johnson, who hit .245/.320/.475 over eight professional seasons, topped out with a short
stint in Triple-A last year. At age 17, he was one of the best power prospects in the country; at age 25,
hes out of baseball. And if his career had an epitaph, it would read, He couldnt make contact. In a
preseason poll at MinorLeagueBall.com, 28 percent of respondents said that Gallos career would
more closely resemble Johnsons than a host of other potential comps.
As the above hodgepodge of superstars and scrubs suggests, even Gallos most comparable players
werent a lot like him. PECOTA grades player similarity on a 100-point scale; the higher the number,
the more alike two players appear based on their age, performance, and position, among other factors.
The average similarity score for a players top comparable is 94, and the average sim score among a
typical players top 100 comparables his Similarity Index is 84. Mike Trout, by some measures
the best position player ever through age 21, is predictably peerless in PECOTAs eyes: His top comp
gets a grade of 68, and he has a Similarity Index of 40. Compared to Gallos best matches, though,
Trout and his comps look like identical twins. Gallo and Stanton earned only a 65 similarity score, and
Gallos Similarity Index was 27. Of the 7,100-plus players for whom PECOTA generated projections,
none was less like all of the others than Gallo. Writers apply the unique tag to players too often in a
sport whose history extends as far back as baseballs does, but as far as PECOTA is concerned, Gallo has
as strong a claim to that label as any current player.
Both projection systems and scouts rely on their knowledge of previous players to inform their future
projections for current players, so the harder it is to come up with examples of players whove
succeeded with the same profile, the less accurate (and often, the more pessimistic) the projection.
Using statistics instead of scouting insight, PECOTA came to the same conclusion as Parks: Gallo could
blossom into a star or become a career minor leaguer. Talk about big error bars. PECOTA forecast that
Gallo would eventually hit close to 50 homers and shatter Mark Reynoldss strikeout record. In the
same season.
The problem with projecting Gallo heading into 2014 was that he did one thing well enough to look like
a lock for stardom, and another so poorly that history suggested it would be virtually impossible for
him to flourish. In 2013, as a 19-year-old playing for the Hickory Crawdads in his second professional
season, Gallo hit 38 homers; he added two more on a rehab assignment in the Arizona League to bring
his season total to 40. Gallos Isolated Power, or ISO a measure of extra-base power production
calculated by subtracting a players batting average from his slugging percentage was .365, more
than three times the .116 South Atlantic League average.
According to the BP database, which contains complete minor league data back to 1978, the only other
player to post an ISO that high relative to the league, while making at least 400 plate appearances in a
season below Double-A, was Eric Anthony, who did it for the Asheville Tourists in 1988. Anthony,
though, was a year older than Gallo was in 2013, and Anthony played half his games in McCormick
Field, one of the best hitters parks in the minors. Adjusting for Gallos offensive environment, his
power display in Class-A was unprecedented.
Thats Gallos good side, where his stats look like Stantons. From another angle, the Johnson
resemblance sticks out. Gallo struck out 78 times in 260 plate appearances in his 2012 post-draft
debut. Last year with Hickory, he batted .245 Johnsons career average and whiffed in 37 percent
of his plate appearances, walking once for every 3.4 Ks. For context, last seasons major league leader,
Carter, struck out 36.2 percent of the time. Since 1985, only three players (Mike Simms, Charlton
Jimerson, and Josh Booty) have made the majors after a Class A season with a strikeout rate as high as
Gallos, relative to the league, and they combined for less than one Win Above Replacement Player.
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From 1978 to 85, when league strikeout rates were lower and thus easier to exceed without being a bust, some
decent players did it, including Glenallen Hill, Rob Deer, Gary Pettis, and Jesse Barfield.
If youre wondering why your favorite high-strikeout slugger isnt on that list, its because most
big league strikeout kings made much more contact in the minors. Gallo has drawn Adam Dunn
comparisons since before his first pro plate appearance, but Dunn hit .292 in Class A, and he struck out
only 19 more times than he walked. In Carters lone full season in the South Atlantic League, he hit
.292 and struck out in 20.6 percent of his plate appearances, barely above the league-average baseline.
If a player strikes out at a reasonable rate in the low minors, he has room to miss more as he moves up
the minor league ladder. If he starts out where Johnson did, with a strikeout rate in the mid-30s in his
first full season, theres not much margin for (additional) error.
Once Gallo had recorded a strikeout rate on the wrong side of history, anything else he did was liable to
be discounted, which explains how he managed to become the first teenager to hit 40 home runs in a
minor league season since 1962 and still be regarded as only the 95th-best prospect in baseball. Like
Losts John Locke, many successful athletes feed off of being told what they cant do. The few without
any obvious flaws have to go out of their way to find doubters, seizing on an opponents idle comment
or a trolling analysts hot take. Others, like Gallo, dont have to manufacture motivation after looking
at prospect lists, or remembering the widespread scouting belief that hitting ability is largely innate.
I was going to improve on all those things to show people that just because you have one year like that
at the age of 19 years old, that it doesnt mean thats the kind of player you are, Gallo says, describing
his mind-set this spring. Its possible you can make adjustments and be a different player. It was
frustrating, obviously, only being 19 years old, being the first full season, that people were already
writing you off not just as a prospect but as a guy that can make an impact in the major leagues.
Gallo is a man on a mission to address his Achilles contact rate, and if he succeeds, he might answer
some key questions about prospect predestination: Is a players path set in stone after one extreme-
strikeout-rate season, as a few decades of flops would suggest? Or can a combination of good makeup
and proper coaching enable a prospect to turn his career around?
If not for the strikeouts that theyre now trying to curtail, the Rangers might never have gotten Gallo.
The lefty from Las Vegas hit .466 with 67 home runs in 569 plate appearances in his four years on the
varsity team at his hometown Bishop Gorman High School, batting .509 with 21 homers in his 2011-12
senior season. Despite those stats and his obvious athleticism Gallo pitched, too, and could touch
the high 90s he fell to the Rangers at pick 39 of the 2012 draft.
Some of the teams that passed on him had signability concerns; Gallo was committed to LSU, and it
took the Rangers $2.25 million, well over the $1.325 million slot, to sign him. Others werent sure that
hed hit for a high enough average at the upper levels and preferred him as a pitcher, an occupation
Gallo had no interest in pursuing. In late March of Gallos senior spring, he attended a high-profile
event for amateur prospects, the National High School Invitational in Durham, North Carolina. He
went 1-for-8 with four strikeouts in three games, and some of the many scouts in attendance didnt like
what they saw.
He really struggled, says Todd Guggiana, the Rangers area scout who signed Gallo. We had guys back
there and he swung and missed a ton I think that tournament scared a lot of teams off.
The Rangers werent as worried. Guggiana had been watching Gallo since the previous summer, and
while hed seen some swing-and-miss, hed never seen him look out of his league. Although the
Rangers national cross-checker and scouting director attended the Durham tournament, the
organization went with Guggianas longer look over its own small sample and, Guggiana says,
rearranged the draft to get [Gallo].
The more homers Gallo hit, the happier the Rangers were that theyd done so. Even when Gallo
stumbled, the organization didnt doubt his skills.
Never from the first day I saw him have I really felt that he was going to have a ton of issues, Mashore
says. A lot of it just was the first whole season experience, how much pressure he put on himself.
Physically, there wasnt a whole bunch wrong with him as much as it was just mentally being ready.
Gallo acknowledges that prior to this season, he had only one plan at the plate, which contributed to
his contact woes. Last year I just kind of went up and swung, hoping everything would be a fastball,
he says.
Mashore tried to get Gallo to adjust to the pitch he received rather than fixate on the one he wanted,
and he found Gallo to be an attentive student. However, as Mashore admits, advice doesnt always
exactly resonate when it comes from a coach.
Fortunately for the Rangers, it does when it comes from an active player with more than 400 career
homers, and Gallo happened to have one on hand. When Gallo was in grade school, his father, Tony,
worked at batting cages owned by Jason Giambi. Gallos talent caught the former MVPs eye, and the
two stayed in touch after the economy tanked and the cages closed. Years later, Gallo gravitated to the
Philippi Sports Institute, where Giambi was a regular, and began training under Mark Philippi, a
former Americas Strongest Man. Gradually, Gallo and Giambi grew closer, and after his high-strikeout
season in Hickory, Gallo sought Giambis assistance.
We were working out, and he just asked me, Hey, can you help me with my hitting this year? Giambi
recalls. And I said, Yeah Id be more than happy. So we started going to the cage three or four times a
week, and we really sat down and started talking, going through and helping him with his mental
approach at the plate.
Giambi, who has transitioned from long-haired, steroid-enhanced party hound to respected clubhouse
leader and manager-in-waiting, might have been the perfect person to polish the unrefined areas of
Gallos game. Obsessed with hitting from an early age, Giambi came out of college as a fully formed
product, accumulating 26 more walks than strikeouts in his first full minor league season. Gallo needed
that kind of knowledge, and Giambi, who has already received multiple offers to become a big league
batting coach, had the passion to pass it on.
The biggest thing I wanted to teach Joey was self-awareness of his swing, where he didnt really need
anybody to help him, Giambi says. Where he could get that mind-body connection. Wed hit a lot on
the tee, and I put the tee really close to him, really tight on his body, so he could feel like hitting that
inside pitch.
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And if he got his hands down, he could load them up and not have so much loop in his
swing, to create more contact without losing his power.
2.
Even in high school, the book on Gallo began with high and inside.
Giambi drilled Gallo on diagnosing his flaws, and he emphasized that walks are a weapon. When Gallo
wasnt getting hitting tips from Giambi or training with Philippi, he was receiving fielding instruction
from Gold Glover Troy Tulowitzki, who helped him improve his footwork to make the most of one of
the strongest infield arms in the minors.
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The offseason regimen was like finishing school for
superstars, and Gallo soaked up the whole syllabus.
3.
Gallo, who has convinced many scouts that he can stick at third, takes his defense seriously, but most of his fans
definitely dig the long ball. A YouTube highlight reel of his homers has more than 15 times as many views as the
companion video of his glovework.
We left it at, Listen, Ill always be here to talk, but go with it, Giambi says. I gave him a bunch of
keys to work through the year, to kind of give him like a little sheet, like a cheat sheet, to help him with
his swing when hes not feeling right.
When Giambi pushed the prospect out of the nest, Gallo flew. Promoted to High-A Myrtle Beach
(former home of who else? Cody Johnson) to start the 2014 season, Gallo picked up where hed
left off in the power department, launching a minor leagueleading 21 homers in his first 58 games
despite playing in a park that slightly hampers home run hitting. This time, though, the power didnt
come with any contact-related caveats. Gallos walk rate nearly doubled, rising from 10.8 percent to
20.7 percent. And despite facing more advanced competition in a league where only one of his plate
appearances came against an opponent who was younger than he was, his strikeout rate declined from
37 percent to a much more manageable 26 percent, which helped boost his batting average to .323.
My swing last year was way longer, so Id miss pitches that were thrown 88 miles an hour down the
middle just because I had so much movement going on, Gallo says. Now, I really dont miss too many
of those pitches. And its a little bit of knowing what a pitchers mentality is and how a teams going to
pitch to you. Now I kind of have a plan of what this guys best pitch is, what hell throw, and am a little
smarter than last year. So that helps putting balls in play.
Compare the following clips, courtesy of Baseball Prospectus author Ryan Parker, who recently
examined Gallos swing. The top one comes from 2013, and the bottom two were captured this season.
Gallos stride and load are a lot less pronounced in 2014, which has made him quicker to the ball. The
end of his bat still tips toward the pitcher as his leg lifts, but not nearly to the degree it did last year,
when it pointed almost straight toward the mound. His hands start out lower, and while they reach
essentially the same position by the time he triggers his swing, they then rise slightly instead of
sinking. Even with a stripped-down swing, Gallos weight transfer, bat speed, and natural strength
supply plenty of pop.
[Ive] definitely cut back on [the load] a lot, Gallo says. Just trying to keep things as simple as
possible, really. Without a big load and without too much movement at all.
One day, we might judge that swing, as Mashore suggests, by how much it makes us want to bore our
grandkids with Gallo GIFs.
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For now, we have numbers. The Rangers use PITCHf/x and HITf/x ball-
tracking technology the same systems installed in every major league park at Hickory and Myrtle
Beach, which tells them how pitchers have attacked Gallo and how his batted balls have behaved. The
output isnt publicly available, but the Rangers were willing to give us the goods.
4.
Which, judging by their staying power so far, will still be state-of-the-art.
Minor league f/x info isnt shared freely among all teams, so the samples are somewhat limited,
encompassing one park and 31 players from Class-A in 2013 and four parks and 115 players from 2014.
Still, thats enough to come to some clear conclusions about how pitchers have approached Gallo, and
how hes responded.
Fastball Rate
Level Gallo League Average
A (2013) 57.7 58.1
High-A (2014) 58.1 60.2
In-Zone Rate
A (2013) 33.9 38.3
High-A (2014) 32.6 38.1
Vertical Launch Angle
A (2013) 28.8 12.9
High-A (2014) 24.9 11.8
Gallo hasnt seen significantly fewer fastballs (pitches classified as four-seamers, two-seamers, or
sinkers) than the typical hitter, but because opposing pitchers are afraid of being burned, he has seen a
lot fewer pitches inside the rulebook strike zone, which suits him fine. As Josue Perez, Gallos High-A
hitting coach, reminded him repeatedly, Theyre not going to pitch to you? Perfect. With his
newfound patience, Gallo can feed off that fear and work favorable counts.
When Gallo does swing and connect, he hits the ball much higher than the typical player, at close to the
optimal angle for hitting home runs (roughly 28 degrees). Although Perez has worked with him on
hitting the ball to the big part of the field, driving the ball the other way, left-center, however, the
slugger is still primarily a pull hitter. For HITf/x purposes, up the middle equals 90 degrees, with
lower numbers to the right side of second. Gallos horizontal launch angle has climbed from 78.8 in
2013 to 81.1 this season, which puts him on par with David Ortiz. Hell soon start seeing the shift.
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5.
Giambi hinted that when that happens, Gallo could add bunting to his bag of tricks.
Thats all a prelude to the big reveal: how hard Gallo hits the ball.
Among players with 25 or more measured batted balls (including fouls) a pool of 31 A-ball batters in
2013, and 115 High-A hitters in 2014 Gallos batted-ball speed was the best, and it wasnt particularly
close. For reference, the average exit speed among major league non-pitchers last season was 75.9
miles per hour, and Miguel Cabrera led the league at 84.9 0.8 mph slower than Gallos exit speed this
season. With the aid of his revamped approach, Gallo has hit the ball harder this season than any major
leaguer did in 2013, including the two-time MVP. While its certainly true that its harder to get good
wood on balls in the majors than it is in High-A, its also true that Gallo is still getting stronger.
His exit speed is the sort of stat that justifies superlatives, which arent in short supply.
He has the frame to be everything you want in a player, says a talent evaluator from another
organization. Good actions, strength in his forearms, and potential for lots of upper-body strength.
Gallo always had that hardware. All he needed was an upgrade to his operating system, and he got that
over the winter.
I think Joey Gallos ceiling is unlimited, Giambi says. I think [he] can be whoever he wants to be. He
has the potential to be a .300 hitter, he has the potential to hit 50 homers, he has the potential to drive
in 140. He runs really well for a big guy. He can play defense at third base. Hes a pretty special player;
you dont see players like this come along very often. And he has the right makeup and the right
attitude I think thats the greatest thing about Joey, is that hes really receptive to learning.
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6.
Gallo agrees, asserting that his Eckstein-esque qualities makeup and personality and being a good teammate
and heart and desire have everything to do with his success.
Often, when a prospects stock inflates this fast, its time to pump the brakes. Gallo isnt far removed
from that 37 percent strikeout rate, and he has yet to prove himself at the upper levels. As Guggiana
says, I try to downplay this stuff until these guys start really dominating in Double-A, and then from
there make steps to Triple-A and the big leagues.
Still, its always a positive sign when the scouting reports back up the stats. Shortly after labeling Gallo
the 95th-best prospect in baseball, Parks said, If he takes a step forward with his swing mechanics
without losing any of his raw power and shows a little bit more bat control, a little bit more ability to
stay with pitches and maybe take a double or take a single every once in a while, he could be a guy who
goes from no. 95 to no. 25. Theres a good chance that thats going to happen. ESPN prospect
evaluator Keith Law, who left Gallo off his preseason top 100 list, bumped him up to his top 25 in an
updated list last month, and other analysts have published positive reports.
Well learn much more about Gallo in the coming weeks. Satisfied that hed done enough damage to the
self-esteem of his High-A opponents, the Rangers promoted him to Double-A Frisco on Sunday.
Batting fifth for the RoughRiders in his Monday debut, Gallo began with a groundout. In his second
through fourth at-bats, he struck out, twice swinging. (Perhaps he was pressing, as he had at the
NHSI.) In the bottom of the ninth, though, Gallo got another chance, with two outs, two on, and the
game tied at four.
That Perez-approved walk-off shot to left-center, which extended Gallos minor league long-ball lead
since the start of last season to 16, was his 84th home run as a professional. Through the kind of
statistical lightning strike that could happen only to him, Gallos career singles total also stood at 84.
He broke that tie on Tuesday, when in his second game at the level that often separates the 70-grade
players from the 40-grade players, he doubled, walked twice, and homered again, extending his minor
league long-ball lead since the start of last season to 17.
Hes doing things that no one has done, Guggiana says. How predictable.
Riley McAtee provided transcription assistance for this article.

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