After 10 years in Major League Baseball as an outfielder, ex New York Yankee bust Joey Gallo has announced that he will be pitching. Following an embarrassing 2-20 with 11 strikeouts in spring training, Gallo asked for his release from the Chicago White Sox.
Gallo played for the Yankees for just 140 games, in that time getting 67 hits, with 194 strikeouts and 25 home runs. He also had a slash line (AVG/OBP/SLG) of .159/.291/.369. Because of these awful stats, Gallo was traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers for Clayton Beeter.
Even before this winter, Gallo was an awfully bad hitter. His strategy was to go for the Three True Outcomes, a walk, a home run, or a strikeout. This led to him having a batting average of .161 last year, with an OBP of .277, and 102 strikeouts. Comparing strikeouts to the other true outcomes, Gallo had 60 more strikeouts than home runs and walks combined
On top of this, Gallo hasn’t even been worth a single win above a replacement player since 2021, and he hasn’t 30 home runs for the same amount of time.
Shortly after his release, he announced on X that he will be switching to pitching. A recent video of him surfaced throwing out runners with 90 mile per hour throws from the outfield.
As crazy as this sounds, Gallo isn’t the first Major Leaguer to start as a hitter and then decide to pitch. Brett Phiilips was once an outfielder in the Big Leagues, but he is now in the Minors as a pitcher for the New York Yankees. Kenley Jansen, a reliever for the Los Angeles Angels, was drafted as a catcher and transformed into a pitcher. Former Mets pitcher Jacob DeGrom, was a shortstop in college and became a pitcher before being drafted.
Will Gallo be able to reinvigorate his baseball career as a pitcher? With his velocity and experience in the outfield, maybe he could.