What do you do if you own Joey Gallo? Well on Monday night you were pretty happy with him, as he went 2-4, 1 HR, 2 R, 1 RBI, hitting his second homer in as many days. With 16 home runs on the year, he's tied for second in the league, and his 34 runs and 33 RBIs (and even the four stolen bases) look pretty nice too. So why is he owned in less than 50% of ESPN leagues? Well that's probably because he's also batting .205 on the year. He's got a ridiculous strikeout rate of 37%, though his 12% walk rate balances out the OBP a little so, if you own him in OBP leagues, he's a slightly below average OBP guy rather than the horrible average guy he is in standard leagues. If Gallo gets starts the rest of the year (and now that Adrian Beltre is back, that's no guarantee) he could hit 40 home runs pretty easily, and with that could come 90 or so runs and RBIs, but that average isn't coming up (ok, maybe it'll come up to like .210). There's talk of Gallo playing in the outfield with Beltre back, and I think the Rangers want him to play because of his massive power. Gallo is a guy who is an important part of a well-balanced team. You take the average hit because the counting stats are too good to pass up. But what's important is that you have other players to balance him out. Personally, I think he should be owned in just about every league, especially if the Rangers figure out a way to work him in the lineup with Beltre back. We all owned Adam Dunn way back when he was this kind of a hitter, why not Gallo?
Let's take a look at some of the other performances from Monday: