Gallo's Pole

Nice getting to do a custom of this guy during the season again, instead of just waiting until December because he's not even gonna begin to hit for average.

Joey Gallo currently has a 2.1 WAR. Which matches his entire 2018 WAR totals, and is .9 away from his 2017 totals. He also currently has a .269 batting average, which is sixty points higher than his previous season high.

...what I am trying to say here is that Joey Gallo, for the first portion of his career, has not been especially good at all aspects of baseball. He had bad fielding numbers in 2017, has finished twice with over 190 strikeouts, and...well, is already leading the AL in strikeouts with 58. BUT Gallo is finally figuring out how to hit for contact, and for average, rather than just hitting home runs.

And it's not as if the home-run hitting has ceased. He already has 13 of those, which is a nice start, especially given his two straight 40+ homer finishes. But he's never finished a season with over 100 RBIs, which makes his 31 after the first quarter of the season a promising start. He's also doing alright with his positional change (from third to left field). I don't know what happened during the offseason, but new life has been breathed into this once-mediocre player.

And in Arlington, it's not just him. Willie Calhoun has been on fire since been called up from AAA, Danny Santana is playing better than he has since his rookie year in Minnesota, Logan Forsythe is continuing his numbers from the second half of last year, and Mike Minor and Lance Lynn are giving nasty stuff in the rotation. Hell, I thought Hunter Pence was done after last year, and he's hitting better than he has in YEARS. The people that a lot of teams had counted out are the ones leading this Rangers team to a better than expected (read: third place) standing for right now.

Now...with Elvis Andrus back on the DL, things may falter a bit heading into June, and the back half of the rotation is still pretty uneven, but this is still an impressive start for a team everyone thought was going to finish in last this year.

Coming Tonight: Will this year be the year he finally gets an MVP? Judging from the impressive start he's had so far, it's an intriguing guess.