Yankees' Joey Gallo Off To A Historically Bad Start

Joey Gallo was traded to the Yankees in July of 2020, and since then, he has statistically been the worst hitter in the sport. The two-time All-Star is a career .205 hitter who does most damage putting balls in the seats. His stellar defense helps wash down all his strikeouts.

He's hitting .154 in his 67 game career in pinstripes with 13 homers and 103 strikeouts. This means Gallo averages 1.54 strikeouts per game while homering in less than six percent of his at-bats.

Any sensible baseball fan who watches games can tell his play has been a monstrosity. However, some nerds defend his play using stats no one gives a rip about. A dude hitting .121 this season is being defended by a bunch of 16-year-olds obsessed with analytics. Seriously.

Yankees GM Brian Cashman should do his job and accept he made a mistake dealing for the former Texas Ranger. Just cut your losses now, Cashman.

I personally cover the Yankees and hold live streams of nearly every game they've played this season. It's been hard to ignore the shift that's essentially swallowed a pull-happy Joey Gallo whole, but I can't give him a pass. We just can't lie to ourselves anymore that a player striking out half the time is a victim of the shift. Gallo can't hit, period.

The nerds are focused on his exit velocity on the balls he does put in play, suggesting his velocities are high compared to everyone else in baseball. The problem? You don't get credit for hitting the ball hard. Players make the Hall of Fame at career's end due to their freakish ability to hit where they ain't, not to rip hard lineups whenever they manage to make contact.

This is why I've suggested on multiple occasions that the Yankees should've moved on from Joey Gallo this past offseason. He's a low contact, high power defender on a team that's already oversaturated with most of those skillsets. I mean, how many Aaron Judge or Giancarlo Stanton-type bats can you throw on one roster?

It's time to surround Aaron Judge, who's set to become a free agent after this season, with contact-first players. The days of watching hitters behind big Aaron Judge strike out four times -- like Gallo did in last night's 4-2 win over the Detroit Tigers -- need to end, ASAP.

Here's even more research we found from @OldSchoolYanks on Twitter to help describe what the Yankees are getting from Gallo:

These numbers are a day outdated, but his dead last .157 batting average in the league has dropped to .121. His contact rate has dropped to last since this tweet yesterday, and every other number on this graphic tells the story of a player who hasn't impacted the Yankees' chances to win in any positive way.

His apologists suggest Gallo is merely "unlucky," and here's how I address these foolish takes:

You can't call yourself unlucky in the game of baseball. It comes across as an excuse because that's all it is -- words to buy analytic goobers time to calculate how they were right and old school baseball fans who still care about stats like batting average were wrong. Thankfully, more baseball fans are waking up that the strikeout, homer, and walk approach is a dismal approach and that Gallo needs to be sent to a better fit. The Yankees do, however, get Gallo's $10.5 million salary off the books in November. That day can't get here soon enough for Yankees fans.