The deed is finally done. The writing was on the wall for Joey Gallo the moment the Yankees traded for Andrew Benintendi last week. Frankly, it’s been etched there ever since the Yankees cut Gallo’s playing time in late June and announced their intention to seek outfield help at the trade deadline.
Gallo hanging around the Yankees on a part-time basis was never going to make sense, and all parties agreed that they would have to move on. As the trade deadline approaches at 6:00 PM ET on Tuesday afternoon, the Yankees have found their prize from last year’s deadline a new home on the West Coast:
Joey Gallo to Dodgers for Beeter according to sources pending medical
— Pat Ragazzo (@ragazzoreport) August 2, 2022
ESPN’s Jeff Passan confirmed Ragazzo’s report. At least it wasn’t in the American League, right? The Dodgers have had their own saga trying to fix Cody Bellinger, so now they’ll be taking on a second draft in Gallo.
As for the minor league pitcher the Yankees are said to have acquired, Clayton Beater was the Dodgers’ second pick in the 2020 MLB Draft out of Texas Tech. The 23-year-old right-hander is ranked as the 15th best prospect in the Dodgers system by both MLB Pipeline and Baseball America. Beeter’s 5.75 ERA, 5.06 FIP and 14.3-percent walk in 51.2 innings (including 16 starts) at Double-A Tulsa this year aren’t very good. However, he has torched 36.1 percent of batters while displaying high spin rates, and earlier this year BA rated his curveball as the best in the Dodgers organization.
The Yankees were always going to get a lottery ticket for Gallo at this point, and with his fastball/curveball combination, team experts could probably turn him into a decent reliever, as BA projects.
As for the finale to Joey Gallo’s brutal saga in New York City, too much digital ink has been spilled, so we’ll keep it relatively brief in its swan song. It was a good idea at the time, as the 2021 Yankees had serious problems with their offense outside of Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton, and Gallo had just appeared in his second All-Star Game. Since becoming a Rangers regular in 2017, he has hit .214/.340/.507 with 138 homers and a 120 wRC+ in 515 games.
A low batting average and high strikeouts have always been part of Gallo’s equation; the left winger played like this, even at his best. The problem for Gallo in pinstripes was that the power never appeared regularly — with Texas, his PA/HR ratio was 14.64 as of 2017; with New York was 20.04. Overall, he hit .159/.291/.368 with 25 homers and an 88 wRC+ in 140 games and only looked more lost as 2022 progressed. Gallo actually hit and walked at a pretty similar rate, but the good contact wasn’t there with both his average exit velocity and barrel velocity being several ticks below what they were as a Ranger.
Some fans will see Gallo’s near-constant decline and say that he just shrugged and refused to change, but that’s simply not true. He made changes and corrections; they just weren’t working, and he was never going to be the type of striker who found success trying a more contact-oriented approach. MLB pitching is more difficult than ever these days (not everyone can be as unusual as Judge), and for someone who never thrived on a baseball diamond like this, it was a much riskier endeavor than just trying to find the right setting to regain your standard stroke.
Baseball players aren’t automatons, either, and both Gallo and manager Aaron Boone mentioned how hard the man’s struggles have been. Obviously, it’s going to be hard to find anyone who’s happy with how they’re playing when they’re scrimmaging, but Gallo really seemed caught up in the tension and the boos. It got to the point where he didn’t feel comfortable leaving his Manhattan apartment until it was time to head to the field because he felt embarrassed.
I really hope Gallo finds his game again, because the Gallo I watched in Texas was really exciting. He seems like a genuinely nice guy, his teammates loved him, and the four prospects the Yankees gave up for him still aren’t really channeling the old Jay Bunner comparisons. Too bad Gallo didn’t work out.
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