New Washington Nationals' Slugger Joins Recently-Retired Catcher in Ominous Baseball History
Heading into 2024, Washington Nationals' slugger Joey Gallo is in a very small group of ominous baseball history.
Per Danny Vietti of CBS Sports on social media:
There are only 2 players in MLB history with 100+ HR and batting average below .200
Joey Gallo
Mike Zunino
Let's start with Zunino, who just announced his retirement yesterday after 11 seasons.
A former first-round pick, he made his major league debut with the Seattle Mariners in the 2013 season and immediately became a regular. He was known for that prodigious power and hit more than 20 homers three times out of six seasons with Seattle. He hit a career-high 33 homers in 2021 with the Rays, the same season in which he made the All-Star Game. Zunino ended up spending four years in Tampa.
However, as the stat indicates, there was another side of the coin. He was a lifetime .199 hitter and had six seasons in which he hit under .200. He had a career .271 on-base percentage and struck out more than 130 times in a season in five different seasons.
As for Gallo, he's heading into his 10th year in the big leagues with the Texas Rangers, New York Yankees, Los Angeles Dodgers and Minnesota Twins. He owns a .197 lifetime batting average and has hit 198 home runs. He hit a career-high 41 homers back in 2017 with the Rangers and has hit at least 38 home runs in three different seasons.
Also prone to the strikeout, he has fanned more than 195 times in three different seasons, and he led baseball in K's in 2021.
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