Joey Gallo's 116 MPH Home Run Blasts Make Him MLB's Top All-or-Nothing Slugger

Joey Gallo might finish his first full major league season with a batting average under .200, more than 200 strikeouts and fewer than 30 singles.

Such a season has never happened. And in any other era of Major League Baseball, simply being on pace for a season like that would have made Gallo a persona non grata.

In this era, however, he's about as grata as can be.

Gallo's power is his key to fitting in. Although he's hitting only .206 in 101 games for the Texas Rangers, he's needed only 360 plate appearances to blast 30 home runs.

That's the fewest trips to the plate among the six hitters who've hit at least 30 homers in 2017. And it gives him a shot at being only the fifth hitter to get to 40 homers in fewer than 500 plate appearances.

These tidbits alone would cast Gallo a special sort of oddity. But the 23-year-old ups the ante by specializing in remarkable dingers.

This is according to Statcast, MLB's hyper-advanced tracking system that lets nothing go unmeasured. For instance: Only Giancarlo Stanton and Aaron Judge have cranked more homers at faster than 110 miles per hour than Gallo has, and only Judge has topped his high of 116.3 mph.

What does a 116.3-mph dinger look like? Oh, something like this:

Gallo doesn't just hit 'em hard. He hits 'em high, too.

The average launch angle on his homers is 30.4 degrees, fifth-highest among hitters with at least 20 homers. He's also hit an MLB-high four homers with a launch angle over 40 degrees, highlighted by a 44-degree moonshot that hung in the air for nearly seven seconds.

Nobody can say they weren't warned about this.

Power was Gallo's calling card when the Rangers chose him as a 6'5", 205-pound drink of water out of Bishop Gorman High School in Nevada with the No. 39 pick in the 2012 draft. He then put on more weight and powered his way to back-to-back 40-homer seasons in 2013 and 2014.

"Tales of Gallo's power sound like hyperbole," wrote Ben Badler for Baseball America in December of '14, "but scouts and coaches with 30-plus years of experience say Gallo hits balls as far as nearly anyone they have ever seen."

Gallo's hyperbolic power arrived in the majors in June 2015 and initially lived up to the hype. He clubbed five homers in his first 14 games, including a long poke off Los Angeles Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw.

Then Gallo went into a slump that highlighted the other thing he was known for.

He earned a demotion with a stretch in which he struck out 22 times in 40 plate appearances. He then whiffed 14 times in 25 plate appearances after getting called back up in September. Nothing changed when he resurfaced in 2016, as he fanned 19 times in 30 trips to the plate.

Tom Szczerbowski/Getty Images

Gallo's strikeout curse is twofold.

His big frame creates a big strike zone for pitchers to exploit. And to make the most of his natural power, he tries for fly balls. That means swinging up at the ball. That means a less-than-direct bat path and, thus, a higher likelihood of whiffing.

"Obviously I'm not trying to strike out," Gallo told Michael Baumann of The Ringer. "But I think it's better for the player I am to go up there and swing the bat with some intent than just stick the bat out there and [say], 'Well, I just hit a ground ball to the second baseman.'"

To his credit, Gallo has changed for the better in 2017...sort of.

He's struck out 137 times for a 38.1 K%. That's an improvement on 2015 and 2016, but it's still on track to be the highest strikeout rate ever for a hitter who's qualified for the batting title.

Throw in how Gallo is also walking 12.5 percent of the time. Then throw in how his 30 homers are accompanied by only two triples, 12 doubles and 20 singles. What you get is a truly odd hitter.

And yet, also a hitter who defines modern baseball like nobody else.

In the early days, baseball was a batter vs. fielders affair. There were walks aplenty, but the guys with the gloves were rarely kept out of the action by pitchers getting their own outs (strikeouts) and hitters hitting the ball into the stands (homers).

In other words, the game didn't revolve around the so-called "three true outcomes." But that's been changing over the years, and the trend has recently changed from going steadily uphill to skyrocketing.

Whether this is a good thing is a matter of taste. But, either way, it's a movement. And it's certainly hard to imagine a more perfect spearhead for it than Gallo.

With 58.9 percent of his plate appearances resulting in a walk, strikeout or homer, he isn't just the three true outcome king of 2017. Right now he's the all-time single-season three true outcome king:

How committed Gallo is to this life is a good question. He's been feasting on more consistency with a .304 average over his last 13 games, and he's clearly liking the taste of it.

"If I keep going on this path, I won't be a .200 hitter with 40 home runs but can hit .270 and actually be more productive on the offensive side," Gallo said Friday, per Jeff Wilson of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. "When I talk to Adrian Beltre and our hitting coaches, they say, 'You're not a .200 hitter. You're going to be this type of hitter one day.'"

But if Gallo decides to stick with what he knows he can do well, that would also be OK.

It's easy to highlight his low batting average as a negative, but it's really not a big deal. His patience has helped push his on-base percentage to a solid .317. His power has created a more-than-solid .548 slugging percentage.

Combine the two, and you get an .865 OPS. That's .115 points higher than the MLB average. So, this guy with the .206 average is actually one of MLB's better hitters.

The Rangers have other reasons to like him, too. Gallo is a solid athlete on the bases, and he can hold his own at third base, first base or left field. His all-around value is encapsulated in his 2.3 wins above replacement. The only Rangers hitter with more is Elvis Andrus.

It is indeed Gallo's bat that defines him, however.

Its ability to produce loud noises can't be overstated, and its ability to produce must not be underestimated.

Data courtesy of Baseball Reference and FanGraphs.