Joey Gallo returned to the Rangers’ lineup Tuesday after suffering a concussion earlier in August. He promptly hit a home run, which is something Gallo has now done 36 times in 2017. That’s a lot of homers, but it’s not an eye-popping number during a year where Giancarlo Stanton is already at 51. However, it’s what Gallo’s homers mean to his overall game that make him special in a way that even Stanton can’t touch ... and neither can anyone else in MLB history.
Joey Gallo’s 36th homer put him on path to weird MLB history
Gallo hits a lot of dingers, but in ways no one in history has ever done before.
Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images
You see, Gallo’s 36th homer was also his 72nd hit of the season. Exactly half of his hits have been homers: he has 36 homers, 14 doubles, two triples, and 21 singles. No one has ever hit this many homers with so few hits: Mark McGwire’s 2000 season, where he had 32 homers and 72 hits, is the closest thing baseball has ever seen.
Of course, Gallo has a whole month left, and maybe he stops hitting homers so often and picks up more doubles and singles in the final weeks of the season. Even if he does, though, it’s not like he’ll suddenly be in well-tread territory. Only 10 player seasons since 1901 have at least 30 homers and no more than 100 hits:
Most homers, fewest hits in MLB history
Rank | Player | HR | H | Year | Age | Tm | G | PA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mark McGwire | 39 | 87 | 1995 | 31 | OAK | 104 | 422 |
| 2 | Joey Gallo | 36 | 72 | 2017 | 23 | TEX | 114 | 414 |
| 3 | Barry Bonds | 34 | 93 | 1999 | 34 | SFG | 102 | 434 |
| 4 | Mark Reynolds | 32 | 99 | 2010 | 26 | ARI | 145 | 596 |
| 5 | Mark McGwire | 32 | 72 | 2000 | 36 | STL | 89 | 321 |
| 6 | Rob Deer | 32 | 97 | 1992 | 31 | DET | 110 | 448 |
| 7 | Ron Kittle | 32 | 100 | 1984 | 26 | CHW | 139 | 525 |
| 8 | Mark Teixeira | 31 | 100 | 2015 | 35 | NYY | 111 | 462 |
| 9 | Jedd Gyorko | 30 | 97 | 2016 | 27 | STL | 128 | 438 |
| 10 | Jose Valentin | 30 | 97 | 2004 | 34 | CHW | 125 | 504 |
Yes, Gallo’s season is so extreme in this regard we had to widen the field that much just to get atypical baseball weirdo Rob Deer to show up.
And if you shrink those hits to just 90, you’re back down to 2017 Gallo (who as mentioned, has time left to play) and two instances of Mark McGwire, who hit 39 homers with 87 hits in the strike-shortened 1995 season — a year further shortened by McGwire’s health, as he only played in 104 of 144 possible games.
McGwire and Barry Bonds are the only players, minimum 20 homers, to have even 40 percent of their hits be home runs. Gallo is out here at 50 percent, with another month of dingering to do. He has the chance to “ruin” this percentage, sure, but he could also go on a homer tear and shoot well past 50 percent, too!
It’s not like this quirk is all Gallo has been good for in 2017, either. Sure, he’s only hitting .206 on the season, but he’s also got a .330 on-base percentage, is slugging .566, and has been anywhere from above-average offensively to hitting like a star at the positions he’s played this year. Batting average isn’t everything!
And, oh yeah, Gallo is only 23 years old, in his first full season in the bigs. We might be seeing the start of a really good (and really strange) career.
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