Thoughts after the Yankees trade for Joey Gallo

Coming soon to a lineup near you. (Getty)

UPDATE: The trade is official and it is as reported: Gallo and Rodriguez (and cash) for Duran, Hauver, Otto, and Smith. Here's the press release.

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The Yankees are getting their big lefty bat. They’re on the verge of completing a six-player trade with the Rangers that brings Joey Gallo to the Bronx. Gallo has never hit a home run against the Yankees, so I can’t link back to a familiar dinger. I leave you this highlight video instead. Here are the trade details as reported by Jack Curry and Jeff Passan:

• Yankees get: OF Joey Gallo, LHP Joely Rodriguez, cash
• Rangers get: 2B Ezequiel Duran, 2B/OF Trevor Hauver, RHP Glenn Otto, SS Josh Smith

There were rumblings Everson Pereira, Clarke Schmidt, Alex Vargas, and others were involved in the trade at various points, but nope. Also, the Yankees were initially expected to receive lefty John King rather than Rodriguez, but King is currently on the injured list with a shoulder issue. I assume the Yankees revised the trade after looking at his medicals.

“Now that the trade is done, we’re incredible excited to add two players that are really going to help us," Aaron Boone told Marly Rivera and Bryan Hoch this morning. "I’m thrilled that (Gallo) is joining us, a tremendous player. I’m thrilled he’s coming to join the fold. We’re excited to get an All-Star. I think we got a lot better today.”

The trade is not official yet (there’s money involved, so the commissioner’s office has to approve the deal) and Cliff Lee taught us to never consider a done deal until it’s actually done. Boone makes it sound done though, so I'm feeling pretty good about it. Let’s get to the thoughts and the breakdown.

1. Lefty pop (and lots of it). Yankees left-handed hitters have hit 22 home runs this season. I am willing to bet Yankees lefties hit 22 homers in a single homestand at some point within the last 4-5 years. Building a lineup so devoid of lefty power while playing home games in Yankee Stadium is an all-time bad screw up by the front office. A complete miscalculation.

Gallo is here to correct that. The 27-year-old won’t fix it all by himself (he is only one man) but he is the game’s premier lefty power hitter. Gallo’s hit 25 home runs this season, so three more than all Yankees lefties combined, and he leads all lefties in homers since 2017:

1. Joey Gallo: 138
2. Matt Olson: 130
3. Kyle Schwarber: 130
4. Cody Bellinger: 128
5. Bryce Harper: 127

Gallo does everything a lefty hitter needs to do to take advantage of Yankee Stadium. He’s an extreme pull hitter (career 48.1%) and he rarely puts the ball on the ground (career 29.8% ground ball rate). Gallo’s such an extreme pull and fly ball hitter that opponents often employ funky four-man outfield shifts against him. This image is a few years old, but look:

And yes, Gallo does bunt against the shift every now and then. He has three bunt hits this year (this one, this one, and this one), which may not seem like many, but the MLB leader has five and only three players have more. Gallo is top 25 in bunt hits since 2017. You don’t want him bunting every single at-bat, but once in a while when you need a baserunner? Sure.

Also, in addition to the extreme pull and fly ball tendencies, Gallo is so damn strong that we’ll inevitably see him mis-hit a pitch, pop it up, and still have it carry into the short porch. Gallo is definitely a man of extremes:

Note the defense. Gallo is an outstanding defender (+36 DRS since 2017) and I’m not kidding when I say Aaron Judge now has only the second strongest arm in the outfield. Gallo has a cannon. Yankees left fielders have hit .226/.293/.364 (81 wRC+) this year and they haven’t been good defensively either. Miguel Andujar and Clint Frazier are my guys, but they stink defensively.

The Rangers have played Gallo in right field the last few years (he won a Gold Glove last season) though my guess is the Yankees will put him in left. That’s fine. Gallo has played left field plenty in his career (more games in left than right, in fact), and he’s an excellent athlete and a good runner despite being 6-foot-5 and 250 lbs. Similar to Judge, Gallo is very athletic for his size. He’s not some lumbering giant.

(Gallo started his career as a third baseman and has also played some first, but he hasn’t played either position in several years now. He’s even said he doesn’t like playing the infield. That’s fine. I’m sure Gallo would play first or third in an emergency, but the Yankees don’t need him to play either position regularly. He’s an outfielder.)

The improved defense is real value added. Gallo is a hitter first and foremost though, and a very good one at that. A flawed hitter? No doubt, but his current .223/.379/.490 (140 wRC+) line is welcome in my lineup any day. My guess at the regular lineup moving forward:

1. 1B DJ LeMahieu
2. RF Aaron Judge
3. LF Joey Gallo
4. DH Giancarlo Stanton
5. C Gary Sanchez
6. SS Gleyber Torres
7. 2B Rougned Odor
8. 3B Gio Urshela
9. CF Brett Gardner

Luke Voit will factor in there somewhere whenever he gets healthy, but gosh, doesn’t that look much better than what the Yankees have run out there the last few weeks? I mean, the starting outfield was Brett Gardner, Estevan Florial, and Greg Allen last night. This weekend in Miami it could be Stanton, Gallo, and Judge. That’s more like it.

A few other cool things about Gallo: first, he doesn’t have a platoon split. He’s not a guy who beats up on righties and gets neutralized by lefties. In fact, he’s better against lefties, though not by a ton. Here are the numbers:

2021 vs. RHP: .209/.381/.476 (136 wRC+)
2021 vs. LHP: .244/.375/.513 (145 wRC+)

2017-20 vs. RHP: .207/.343/.497 (117 wRC+)
2017-20 vs. LHP: .230/.335/.531 (126 wRC+)

Yeah, that works. What also works is Gallo’s tendency to punish low-spin fastballs. Every hitter struggles with high-spin fastballs, that’s why teams preach them and why pitchers use sticky stuff, but Gallo’s splits between high and low spin heaters are drastic. With the foreign substance crackdown lowering spin rates, there may be some hidden value in Gallo. That’d be neat.

And lastly, Gallo rarely hits into double plays. He is the anti-2021 Yankee in that regard. Since becoming a regular in 2017, Gallo has grounded into nine (!) double plays in over 2,000 plate appearances. The Yankees have grounded into nine double plays since I put the coffee on. All the strikeouts and fly balls mean few double plays. I now look forward to Gallo grounding into a double play in his first at-bat as a Yankee. The baseball gods have a twisted sense of humor.

All in all, the Yankees needed to add a position player at the deadline who does these things (in no particular order):

• Hits left-handed.
• Plays the outfield and is a good defender.
• Hits home runs (and extra-base hits in general).
• Runs the bases well and brings some speed.
• Doesn’t strike out excessively.
• Is under control beyond 2021.

Gallo checks five of the six boxes (he’s a top 25 base-runner since debuting in 2017). I’m not sure there’s another player in baseball who could have addressed that many needs at once, and there definitely wasn’t one realistically available at the trade deadline. All things considered, Gallo is likely the single best addition the Yankees could have made. He’s a big upgrade in multiple ways.

2. Who is Rodriguez? The second piece in the trade has an interesting story. Rodriguez, a 29-year-old lefty reliever, went up and down with the Phillies from 2016-17, spent two years in Japan (1.85 ERA in 87.2 innings for the Chunichi Dragons from 2018-19), then returned to MLB last season. The Rangers are always active overseas and they gave him a two-year contract worth $5.5M.

In 40 innings the last two years Rodriguez has a 4.73 ERA (3.06 FIP), which is a big disconnect! One of the largest in baseball, in fact. Neither the strikeout (26.1%) nor walk (9.4%) rate really stand outs, but the ground ball rate does. Here is the ground ball rate leaderboard among the 400 pitchers with at least 40 innings the last two years:

1. Clay Holmes: 72.3%
2. Aaron Bummer: 71.7%
3. Emmanuel Clase: 68.4%
4. Richard Bleier: 68.4%
5. Framber Valdez: 65.7%
6. Victor Gonzalez: 61.2%
7. Joely Rodriguez: 60.7%

Within the last 48 hours or so the Yankees have added two of the top ground ball pitchers in baseball over the last two seasons. The Yankees also have Zack Britton (68.4% ground balls in 28.1 innings the last two years) and Jonathan Loaisiga (58.9%) in the bullpen. It’s not a coincidence. The Yankees are prioritizing ground ball relievers (or ground ball pitchers in general) as the foreign substance crackdown reduces spin rates and thus whiffs.

Rodriguez gets his grounders with a mid-90s sinker and an upper-80s changeup. It seems the sinker/changeup profile is becoming popular, no? Loaisiga, Rodriguez, and Wandy Peralta all work with sinkers and changeups. Rodriguez has a lower arm angle and almost slings the ball from an Andrew Miller-esque sidearm delivery (video link):

Since returning to MLB last year Rodriguez has been more effective against lefties (.229 wOBA) than righties (.329 wOBA), though it’s not a huge sample, and he hasn’t been terrible against righties. Average more than anything. The Yankees would prefer to use Rodriguez against a string of lefties but he can hold his own in the three-batter minimum era.

At the end of the day, I want strikeouts in the late innings and high leverage situations. Nothing bad can happen when the ball isn’t put in play. Ground balls are the next best thing though, and it’s not like the Yankees are avoiding strikeouts entirely. They’re just zigging a little bit after zagging so long, and getting extreme ground ball pitchers. It’s an interesting shift.

(I jumped the gun and wrote a blurb on John King before the trade was revised, so I dumped that in the content graveyard. I’d rather have King than Rodriguez because he’s younger and better, and can be optioned to the minors, though if his shoulder is borked, then he’s not all that useful, is he?)

3. The four prospects. The Yankees parted with four prospects to get Gallo and Rodriguez and none of the four rank among their very best prospects. They kept Jasson Dominguez, they kept Anthony Volpe, and they kept Oswald Peraza. They also kept Deivi Garcia rather than sell low on him amid his rough Triple-A season. That’s good. I’d rather not sell low on Garcia.

When I updated my personal top 10 Yankees prospects list after the draft, it did not include any of the four prospects in the trade. That said, I didn’t spend too much time thinking about it, and I should’ve had Duran in the top 10 somewhere. As the trade rumors were flying last night, Baseball America (subs. req’d) posted their midseason top 30 Yankees prospects. The four:

6. 2B Ezequiel Duran (between Luis Medina and Trey Sweeney)
8. SS Josh Smith (between Sweeney and Deivi Garcia)
20. RHP Glenn Otto (between Ken Waldichuk and Oswaldo Cabrera)
22. 2B Trevor Hauver (between Cabrera and Beck Way)

I had Duran, 22, on my list of players to write about the next time I wrote about prospects, but I waited too long. My bad. Like so many Yankees prospects, he’s having a monster year, hitting .290/.374/.533 (141 wRC+) with 12 homers and a career low 23.9% strikeout rate in 67 High-A games. Duran’s a right side of the infield defender, but he can really hit. I've been writing about that guy for a long time now.

Smith, 23, is also having a big year. He’s hitting .324/.448/.641 (189 wRC+) with nine homers in 39 games split between Low-A and High-A. He’s shown more power than expected and is a true shortstop defensively. Hauver's having a big season too. The 22-year-old has a .288/.445/.498 (159 wRC+) line with nine homers in Low-A. Supposedly the second base experiment isn’t going well and he’s likely to move back to the outfield, but who really knows.

I’ve written about Otto a few times this season, including two weeks ago. He added a slider this year and has a 3.33 ERA (2.31 FIP) in 75.2 innings split between Double-A and Triple-A, and his 115 strikeouts are one short of the minor league league. Otto has a long injury history (it’s all arm injuries too) and this is the first time he’s stayed healthy for an extended period.

The Yankees traded three middle infielders but kept Volpe and Peraza, and also Alex Vargas, who might have the highest upside of them all. Also, the system is loaded with power arms like Otto. I said this a few weeks ago: he felt like a “he stayed healthy for a few weeks? quick, trade him!” candidate, and that’s pretty much exactly what happened. Similar to Hoy Jun Park and Diego Castillo, Otto was a non-factor three months ago, then he became a tradeable prospect.

Duran and Otto will be Rule 5 Draft eligible after the season, so trading them helps with the 40-man roster situation. The Yankees dealt from areas of depth in the system (middle infielders and power arms) and kept their very best prospects, and let’s give the scouting and player development folks some props. Here’s how each player was acquired:

• Ezequiel Duran: International free agency ($10,000 bonus)
• Trevor Hauver: 2020 third round ($587,400 bonus)
• Glenn Otto: 2017 fifth round ($320,900 bonus)
• Josh Smith: 2019 second round ($976,700 bonus)

These aren’t former first round picks or big money international signings. The Yankees always seem to turn a few small bonus international signings into legitimate prospects and it doesn’t get much more small bonus than Duran. Packaging four good but not elite prospects who aren’t the best at their position in the farm system to get a guy like Gallo is a no-brainer.

I think Texas received three high probability future big leaguers (Duran, Otto, Smith) in the trade and I have to think Otto will pitch in the show at some point this year. They have to add him to the 40-man roster after the season anyway, so let him get his feet wet. The Rangers visit the Bronx late in the season (Sept. 20th to 22nd). Maybe Gallo will get to face Otto then. Would be fun.

I’ve been itching for the Yankees to make consolidation trades like this the last few years, where they use the farm system’s depth to turn three or four prospects into a quality big leaguer. They did it with the Jameson Taillon trade to some extent and they’ve definitely done it with Gallo, who is a bona fide impact hitter with control beyond the current season. Smart, sensible move.

(Early iterations of the trade included outfielder Everson Pereira and righty Randy Vasquez, who will be Rule 5 Draft eligible this year. Wouldn’t surprise me to see the Yankees move them at the deadline, even if they only use them to dump Clint Frazier’s or Darren O’Day’s salary. That they were in this trade at one point suggests the Yankees are leaning against putting them on the 40-man roster.)

4. About the money. According to Joel Sherman, the Rangers are eating all the money owed to Gallo and Rodriguez this year. Gallo still has about $2.3M coming to him and Rodriguez is owed roughly $900,000 (with a $1.05M prorated luxury tax hit). That $3.3M or so is a small sum to an MLB franchise, though it certainly helps the Yankees stay under the $210M luxury tax threshold.

As noted yesterday, estimates had the Yankees with $2.4M to $2.9M in available wiggle room under the threshold but those are only estimates. The Yankees know the exact number. Whatever it is, the Rangers paying Gallo and Rodriguez means the Yankees still have room to play with under the luxury tax threshold, plus room for injury call ups, etc.*

* The Yankees didn’t give Luis Cessa away only to turn around and blow up the luxury tax plan. They’re sticking to it and this is one of those things where I’m 100% comfortable not sweating the details. The Yankees have the luxury tax under control, though it may require another trade to clear out payroll (Frazier is an obvious trade candidate now that Gallo took over left field.)

Gallo is not a rental. He will remain under team control as an arbitration-eligible player next season. This year’s $6.2M salary puts Gallo in line for something like $9M to $10M next year. Whatever it ends up being, it’s fine. The luxury tax threshold would have to go up significantly with the new Collective Bargaining Agreement for the Yankees to stay under next season. There’s basically no way around paying luxury tax in 2022.

Also, Gallo will be a qualifying offer candidate next year (assuming qualifying offers don’t go away with the new CBA), which means the Yankees will get a draft pick and recoup a prospect that way should he leave as a free agent. He’s a $0 luxury tax player this season and the Yankees figure to get a draft pick if he leaves as a free agent next year.

Rodriguez’s contract includes a $3M club option ($500,000 buyout) for next year. He’ll finish the season with less than three years of service time, though he signed with Texas after playing in Japan, and players who come from overseas are typically allowed to become a free agent when their contract expires as a professional courtesy. I don’t think Rodriguez will remain under team control as an arbitration-eligible player after his contract is up.

In the short-term, the Yankees are taking on zero dollars (both real life and luxury tax), which gives them wiggle room to do a few more things prior to tomorrow’s trade deadline. In the long-term, they can retain both Gallo and Rodriguez next season, and Gallo will likely bring a compensation draft pick when he becomes a free agent. That’s all pretty much perfect.

5. Too many strikeouts. As I said earlier, nothing bad can happen when the ball isn’t put in play, and that applies to the offense too. The Yankees struck out 13 times last night and their strikeout rate, if we remove pitchers hitting, is sixth highest in baseball this season:

1. Mariners: 26.3%
2. Tigers: 26.0%
3. Rays: 26.0%
4. Cubs: 25.2%
5. Marlins: 24.6%
6. Yankees: 24.5%

That’s with Luke Voit missing most of the year and Gallo not yet taking an at-bat as a Yankee. Gallo is an extreme strikeout guy. His 32.2% strikeout rate this year is the lowest of his career, and from 2018-20, it was a 36.4% strikeout rate. That’s extreme. It’s extreme and it’s very bad, and another super high strikeout rate hitter is pretty much the last thing the Yankees need.

The Yankees are not oblivious to this and it’s something they’re going to have to address this offseason, I believe. For now, they’re banking on Gallo doing enough other things (walks, home runs, defense, baserunning) to make up for the strikeouts, and for the lineup to collectively hit for enough power to survive the strikeouts. But yeah, they’re going to strike out a lot. A lot a lot.

Because he strikes out so much, a huge chunk of the fan base is going to hate Gallo no matter how many balls he hits onto the 4 train platform. Michael Kay will give his “teams don’t care about strikeouts anymore!” speech every other day and we’ll just have to live with it. (Kay’s new thing is harping on Giancarlo Stanton missing a pitch by a lot, as if contact hitters don’t do it all the time.)

Anyway, the strikeouts are an eyesore at best and a fatal flaw at worst, and the Yankees just added a bunch more to their lineup. It’s not great. At the same time, the perfect player doesn’t exist, and even if he did, he wasn’t available at this trade deadline. Gallo is such a huge upgrade in every other facet of the game that the Yankees will live with the bad to get the good.

6. The clubhouse. A few days ago the Mariners, who were coming off a thrilling comeback win over the Astros the night before and sat one game behind the second Wild Card spot, traded ace reliever Kendall Graveman across the field to Houston. And Mariners players were pissed. Who could blame them? Ryan Divish has the details:

Several players opted not to speak on the record about the move, but their anger was palpable. Sources said equipment was broken and smashed while one player “went absolutely mad.”

“Betrayed” was a word used often.

“Are you (expletive) kidding me?” said the same player. “It never changes. They don’t care about winning. How do you trade him and say you care about winning? And you trade him to Houston? It never changes.”

There is a human element to these trades and part of me wondered how the Luis Cessa trade played in the clubhouse. The Yankees have suffered a string of demoralizing losses in recent weeks, and then they shipped out a good pitcher and a popular teammate for no return. It would be tough to sell the players on that being a plus, I imagine.

The Cessa trade was all business. The Gallo trade is the front office telling the players “we believe in you and we’re getting you the help you need.” That’s something that can resonate in the clubhouse. Does it translate to wins? Maybe not, but there’s a real message sent to the players there, and it is an overwhelmingly positive message, I believe.

By all accounts Gallo is a good dude and a popular teammate (I assume Rougned Odor was consulted about how Gallo and Rodriguez would fit in the clubhouse) and that’s not nothing. Again, does it translate to wins? Maybe not, but good vibes are good vibes, and the Yankees need as many good vibes as they can get this year. They’ve been hard to come by.

7. What’s next? The Yankees have their lefty bat and they remade their bullpen a bit (is the bullpen better? I’m unconvinced), so what remains on the to-do list prior to the 4pm ET trade deadline tomorrow? As good as Nestor Cortes has been (and he’s been great), I really would like another starting pitcher, especially with Deivi Garcia struggling and Mike King out a while.

Jon Heyman says the Yankees still “see room” for Trevor Story, though I don’t love the idea of giving up good prospects to get a rental. Especially since the Yankees would need the Rockies to eat money to make the luxury tax plan work, even after the Rangers ate all the money owed to Gallo and Rodriguez. Story’s luxury tax number won’t fit as things currently stand.

Whether it’s Story or a pitcher or something else entirely, I don’t think the Yankees are done. It would be difficult if not impossible to top Gallo, he’s their big move, but they can still make upgrades around the roster. Pitching is my No. 1 priority at this point. Preferably a pitcher the Yankees can keep beyond 2021, but those dudes are hard to get.

"I wouldn't rule anything out," Boone told Pete Caldera and Max Goodman today when asked about the possibility of more trades before the deadline. “Well see. I know talking to (Brian Cashman) this morning, they’re set up in the war room already this morning, still exploring things."

8. No. 13? And finally, something only I care about: Gallo has worn No. 13 his entire career and the Yankees have not reissued No. 13 since Alex Rodriguez was forced into retirement. I think No. 13 should be retired but it’s not, and I don’t think it will be retired anytime soon. If the Yankees don’t give it to Gallo, then my guess is No. 13 will stay in purgatory with No. 21. Not retired but not in circulation either, which is kinda dumb. We’ll see.

(Send your requests for Tuesday's random Yankee series and questions for Friday's mailbag to RABmailbag at gmail dot com.)