Still Settling In, Joey Gallo Enjoys His Yankees Breakout
Hours before Joey Gallo’s coming out party, he and Yankees hitting coach Marcus Thames were tucked away in the team’s video room.
Following a pre-deadline trade from Texas, Gallo’s New York tenure was off to a hushed start and he was still in a slump that spanned his final weeks with the Rangers. Gallo’s first six games with the Yankees included just two hits, zero RBI and 10 strikeouts, and he was 6-for-61 (.098) over his last 19 games entering Thursday. That plunge left him and Thames “trying to figure out some things,” the coach said, ahead of New York’s series against the Mariners.
“We just gotta get him to slow down a bit. He’s with a new team and he’s streaky, but he is talented. That’s why we got him,” Thames said pregame Thursday. “I think he’s going to be okay. We just gotta get him comfortable and get him going, and I think he’s gonna help us a lot.”
Gallo looked cozy as can be at the plate later that night, and his contributions more than helped the Yankees. The 27-year-old produced his first multi-hit game as a Bronx Bomber, ripping two doubles before a massive upper-cut lifted a seventh-inning offering over Yankee Stadium’s right field porch. The three-run homer came against Paul Sewald, who went to the same high school as Gallo, and was the slugger’s first longball in pinstripes.
It proved to be the deciding blow in a 5-3, come from behind win over Seattle.
"I’m glad we had that short porch there for that home run,” Gallo said afterward. “I had a couple friends from Texas text me and say, 'Hey, that's an F9 in Texas, that's an out.' I was like, ‘Yeah, but we’re not in Texas anymore.’”
Prior to the offensive outburst, Thames said that Gallo, being a “power guy,” was “trying to go get the baseball instead of seeing it a little bit longer.” The coach accurately predicted that Gallo would put some balls in play if he made that adjustment.
Gallo added that the Yankees noted things he was doing in 2019, though he didn’t specify. He only played in 70 games that year due to injuries, but he was a first-time All-Star and posted career-highs in average (.253), on-base percentage (.389) and slugging (.598) while crushing 22 homers in 241 at-bats.
But really, the pregame video sesh was more about getting acquainted. That process is still ongoing—and a two-way street—a few days removed from the trade that brought Gallo to New York.
“We’re still getting to know each other. They’re still getting to know me,” Gallo explained. “You can do a lot of homework on somebody, but it’s tough to fix somebody or help somebody without getting to know them and understanding their mentality. It really wasn’t any serious or pressure conversation. It was just more of, ‘What do you feel?’ A couple things here and there that they thought could help me out a little bit.”
Aaron Boone, thrilled following his new bat’s improbable homer, expanded on Gallo’s sentiment, adding that “the trade deadline is a whirlwind.”
“It’s not just the baseball part of it. It’s meeting new people, it’s moving,” the manager continued. “You want to get settled. You want to get comfortable. So there’s no question that having some results and getting a huge hit in a victory allows you to exhale a little bit.”
Boone and Thames’ hope is that Gallo will continue to settle in and expand on Thursday’s breakout moving forward. But, immediately following his first Bronx curtain call, the childhood Yankees fan was still getting acclimated to his new surroundings.
"I was thinking in the outfield, the 10-year-old me would be crying right now and not believing what’s going on,” Gallo said. “It's really crazy to me."
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