5 years agoEven if the baseball loses some juice in 2020 and Texas’ new climate-controllable park is less friendly to hitters than the previous confines, Joey Gallo will hit homers if he stays healthy. Unfortunately, after breaking his hamate bone and undergoing the surgery to remove it in late July, Gallo never returned to the plate in 2019, denying observers the ability to see how that notoriously finicky type of injury would affect his play. The biggest question about Gallo is what will happen to the .253 batting average he posted in 2019. It raised his career average all the way to .212, he needed a .368 BABIP to achieve it (thanks to a 38.4 K%), and his xBA by Statcast was just .229. While Gallo should be farther from the Mendoza line than he was prior to last year, something in the .220 area is much more realistic than hoping for another .250 performance. The good news is Gallo did set career bests of a 17.5 BB% and a 16.2% swing-and-miss rate, so his approach continues to improve despite the strikeouts. Overall, there’s enough risk surrounding Gallo’s health, ballpark, batting average, and surrounding cast (for runs and RBI) that his ADP of 77 is a bit too early in standard leagues unless your early draft picks are light on power. But if you can get him a round later, go for it. Note that with a player like Gallo, that ADP becomes more than fair in OBP leagues and a steal in OPS leagues.--Nathaniel Green