It's still pretty confusing why the Rangers even brought Joey Gallo up in the first place when Shin-Soo Choo hit the disabled list again last week.
Gallo was up with the big club for basically a week after a promising start to his season at Triple-A Round Rock with a drastically decreased strikeout rate and the same prodigious power he flashed in 2015 with the Rangers before the bottom fell out from under him.
Yet, in that week, he got one measly at-bat as a pinch hitter and wasn't used in several pinch-hit situations which would've made good sense to give him a try. Then, he was sent back down.
It hasn't taken Gallo long to get back into a groove, especially considering he was fresh off the minor-league disabled list before being called up to the Rangers.
On Monday, Gallo went 3-for-3 with a home run and a walk in a Round Rock win over Reno (Athletics).
Now in his 26 games with Triple-A Round Rock, Gallo is hitting .292 with a mammoth .443 on-base percentage thanks to his 25 walks next to 25 strikeouts — a drastic improvement on K:walk ratio. He also has nine homers and 22 RBIs with a robust 1.118 OPS.
It's only Triple-A, not the bigs, but the huge improvement in drawing walks and the huge decrease in strikeouts is awfully encouraging for perhaps the most powerful power-hitting prospect in all of baseball.
