Prior to you reading the rest of the article, I would like to let you know that this is where my projection system can also be a bit iffy. I wrote about how if a player simply hasn't played much in the upper levels of the minors how his projection could get quite skewed. Well, today I'll be writing about Giovanny Gallegos (and Tyler O’Neill), who have spent time completely excelling statistically at the upper level of the minors. This may end up skewing their projections a bit higher than they will accomplish in their actual 2019 MLB season.
Here is the typical reliever per 60 innings over the past 5 years in MLB:
Giovanny Gallegos has just over 30 innings of major league baseball to his name and is already entering his age 27 season. Despite that, MLB Pipeline lists him as the Cardinals 23rd best prospect. He came over in the Luke Voit trade last year and at the time I thought he would be the Cardinals better pitcher coming back, rather than Chasen Shreve. Now, the Cardinals have a lot of depth at RH relief pitcher, but Gallegos is a name that greatly stands out in my projections. Due to his extended, good track record at the upper levels of the minors, his stat line in my projection is quite good when compared to that 5-year league average.
Let’s look at the line and then talk a bit more about Gallegos. Note: I am currently writing up Gallegos with 60 innings pitched, as if he has made the majors out of spring. When I show my team projections at the end of spring training, these numbers might be closer to 15-20 innings if I think he’ll be in Memphis most of the year.
Here is what I have projected for Giovanny Gallegos’ 2019 season:
60 games, 60 innings
2.85 ERA, 2.46 FIP, 1.100 WHIP, 4.88 K:BB
7.5 H/9, 11.70 K/9, 2.40 BB/9, 0.75 HR/9
How/If things go wrong:
In Kyle’s write up of graduated prospects off of his Dirty 35, Kyle says this of Gallegos:
The Cliff Notes version of Mr. Gallegos is that he has shown the ability to be dominant out of the pen at the minor league level. The issues is, he doesn't show that same dominance at the major league level because his stuff isn't really that great.
That sounds, to me, like how things could go wrong.
What can be pointed out to show that things CAN be better than that?!?
To be honest, nearly absolutely nothing. I mean, at the major league level, there’s nothing to show that he can be that good, despite his decent numbers there. His slider seems to be his best pitch. Here’s one example of that:
You can see that it’s got some good movement, which has produced as high as a 29.5% swing and miss rate in the majors over a small sample. Kyle does say in his aforementioned write up:
[Gallegos] does command his arsenal very well, and that's a huge positive. One thing that really impresses me about Gallegos (and is worth keeping an extra eye on), is how well he matches up against lefties...To me, this is what makes him an interesting potential addition to the major league bullpen moving forward.