LOS ANGELES — Joey Gallo‘s time in Dodger blue was, to be honest, kind of like his time with every other organization. Mammoth homers. A bunch of walks. And whole heck of a lot of swing and miss. But this week, on X, the 32-year-old Gallo posted some video of his latest attempt at reinvention. It was our first real look at Gallo the pitcher, not Gallo the Three True Outcomes slugger.
For Dodgers fans, the sight hits a little different. Gallo spent the back half of 2022 in Los Angeles after the deadline trade from the Yankees, a classic Friedman buy-low on a former star. In 44 games with the Dodgers he hit .162 with a .277 on-base percentage and a .393 slug, finishing with 19 hits, seven homers, 23 RBIs and 16 runs scored over 117 at-bats. The contact issues never really disappeared, but when he got into one, you could feel the dugout lean forward. Even in a short stint, seven balls left his bat and did not come back.
The MLB.com piece on his comeback lays out just how far he has to climb. From 2022 through 2024, across stops with the Yankees, Dodgers, Twins and Nationals, Gallo posted a .166/.286/.379 line with a 40.6 percent strikeout rate. His last big-league action came with Washington in 2024, where he hit .161 in 223 at-bats, with the same swing-and-miss pattern that has defined the second half of his career.
All of that came after a very different run in Texas. With the Rangers, Gallo was an All-Star twice, a two-time Gold Glove winner and one of the most feared power bats in the sport, stacking up two 40-homer seasons on the way to 208 career home runs and counting. When the Dodgers took their shot on him in 2022, it was that version they were hoping to tap back into: the guy who could change a game with one swing and cover serious ground in the outfield.
Now he is trying to change games in a totally different way. According to the article, Gallo told clubs in March that he wanted to pursue pitching full time, shortly after signing a minor-league deal with the White Sox and then asking out once he made his intentions clear. Chicago released him, and Gallo went to work off the radar. Eight months later, the video shows up: smooth delivery, easy velocity, and that sharp pop at the end that makes every scout perk up a little.
If you watched him in right field at Dodger Stadium, the arm part will not surprise you. Statcast had his average outfield arm strength at 93.9 mph in 2021 with Texas and New York, fifth-best in the majors among regular outfielders, and even in 2023, before he moved mostly to first base, he still averaged 89.8 on his throws. That has always been part of the Gallo package: monster raw power at the plate and a hose from the outfield.
What we did not see in L.A. was the pitcher he used to be. Years before the Home Run Derby appearances and the big-league Gold Gloves, Gallo was a legit two-way prospect in high school, touching the mid-90s on the mound and drawing interest as a right-handed arm as well as a left-handed bat. In fact, there is a story that Gallo went to prom on the same day that he threw a no-hitter with the daughter of somebody who knows a little about pitching: Hall of Famer (and short-term Dodger) Greg Maddux. But in the end the long ball won out. The Rangers, and eventually the rest of the league, chose the homers. A decade later, with his offensive game stuck in neutral, he is going back to the old fork in the road.
From a Dodger perspective, this comeback attempt sits somewhere between nostalgia and curiosity. Gallo’s time here was short and uneven, but it came during another 100-win season, and there were flashes when it felt like the organization might unlock him. He hit those seven home runs in Dodger blue, ran into a few balls that brought the dugout to life and drew the kind of walks that hinted at the player he once was.
Now he is trying to stick in the league in an entirely new role. He won’t be the first person to attempt this sort of comeback. Rick Ankiel started his career as a pitcher before wildness forced him to abandon the mound. He ended up with a decent career as a big-league centerfielder. Our own Kenley Jansen famously started his career as a catcher before becoming one of the best closers in team history. And of course, Shohei Ohtani has decided to keep doing both.
There is no guarantee any team bites on what Gallo is selling. Converting from everyday outfielder to pitcher at 32 is a huge ask, even for someone with that arm strength. But for a fan base that watched him take one more shot in 2022, it is hard not to root for the story. The bat may not have cooperated over the last few years, yet the arm never left, and if that 15–second clip is any indication, Joey Gallo is not done chasing big-league hitters just yet.
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