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Joey Gallo has signed a one-year deal with the Washington Nationals. After some big seasons in Texas, his production has slipped of late. Does he hold any sort of fantasy baseball value with his new team?
Slugger Joey Gallo is on the move again, signing a one-year, $5 million deal to join the Washington Nationals for the 2024 season.
While he has bounced around in recent seasons, Gallo has some excellent MLB campaigns on his resume. However, he is a unicorn in the game in the sense that he is a true outcome player. In other words, many of his at-bats end in a strikeout, a walk, or a home run. It's a dangerous way to live but that is exactly the player Gallo has been throughout his career.
He is likely to see time at the corner outfielder spots, first base, and designated hitter for the 2024 Nationals. The question fantasy managers will ask themselves is whether Gallo can still bring value to a fantasy baseball roster, largely on the back of his power. Let's examine if the 30-year-old is still on the fantasy radar.
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Does Joey Gallo Still Hold Fantasy Baseball Value?
The past few seasons have been nothing short of a roller coaster for Gallo. The 30-year-old struggled in the shortened 2020 season before bouncing back in the 2021 season, although he scuffled following a trade-deadline deal to the Yankees that year. His 2022 season was a disaster between the Yankees and Dodgers and he settled into roughly league-average production with the 2023 Minnesota Twins.
Gallo has fallen below the Mendoza Line in each of the last four seasons, posting a sub-.200 batting average from 2020-2023. As usual, he has posted big-time walk rates to keep his production afloat in that time but he continues to strike out at laughable rates. His 42.8% K% last season was not only a career-worst, by far, but easily the worst mark in baseball among the 293 hitters that made at least 300 trips to the plate.
Still, his power bounced back with 21 homers in just .332 plate appearances, giving him a .263 isolated power that was a marked improvement from his .197 mark in the 2020 and 2022 seasons. Strikeouts aside, he can regain fantasy baseball value if he can maintain his prodigious power and massive walk rates, such as he did as recently as 2021 when he slugged 38 home runs alongside an 18% BB%, good for a 121 wRC+.
The Nationals ranked 21st in runs scored last season, exceeding expectations in the process. That number likely isn't going any higher after what has (so far) been a quiet offseason. Gallo's counting stats will suffer as a result and ATC is projecting just 93 games and 354 plate appearances out of him in 2024 alongside 19 home runs and 43 RBI.
He is best left alone on draft day, but his name is always worth following in case he gets anywhere near his 40-homer seasons from the 2017-18 campaigns.
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