Texas Rangers: Could Joey Gallo be next on the trade block?

Could Joey Gallo become a casualty of the Texas Rangers’ impending rebuild?

The Texas Rangers have made some noise during the 2020 Winter Meetings.

This is especially the case in the trade department, as the team sent Lance Lynn to the Chicago White Sox on Tuesday and acquired Nate Lowe from the Tampa Bay Rays on Thursday.

With Texas at the beginning of a rebuild, the obvious question on the minds of many fans is “Who’s next?”

By next, we mean which Rangers veteran could be shown the door soon?

The player on the current Texas Rangers’ roster who seems to have the most value and therefore has the likeliest chance to bring back the biggest return is Joey Gallo.

With this in mind, it’s fair to wonder if Gallo could be the next Ranger on the move.

Let’s discuss.

The case for trading Joey Gallo

If you were the Rangers, you might ask yourself why you’d move on from a core piece who was an All-Star and MVP candidate not that long ago?

First of all, Gallo gives you the best chance to get a good haul of prospects in return, as mentioned earlier.

If Texas were to package him with a young and cheap reliever like Jose Leclerc or Rafael Montero, they could receive a nice infusion of talent to help fuel the rebuild.

While Gallo had a down year offensively in 2020, he made up for some of those struggles by winning a Gold Glove in right field.

The Rangers are hoping that a team might be willing to bet on his hitting rounding back into what it was when he was an American League All-Star in 2019.

Combine his 2019 outburst with his defensive abilities and you have a legitimate MVP candidate with two more years of control before he hits free agency.

Sounds appealing, right?

After all, it’s not often that teams would trade a player capable of hitting 40-plus home runs in a season who also has an absolute cannon for an arm.

Perhaps these qualities would be enough to entice a team to offer a deal that the Rangers can’t refuse.

The case against trading Joey Gallo

On the other hand, Gallo could be viewed as a core piece for Texas going forward.

The Rangers need someone to be the centerpiece of their rebuild, and there is belief that Gallo can be that player.

2019 was clear evidence of this.

While outfield defense has been an issue for the Rangers in recent years, the team has Gallo’s strong glove in right field next to the talented Leody Taveras patrolling center field.

In that scenario, Texas would have above average defense in two out of three outfield spots.

That would bode well for the Rangers going forward.

When Gallo’s name was mentioned at the trade deadline back in August, there were those in the industry who believed that the Rangers had maybe overvalued him.

Texas’ cost to acquire Gallo was relatively high at the time, perhaps too unrealistic given his dip in production from the year before.

The fact that the Rangers put such a high price on acquiring the big slugger over the summer should give fans reason to believe that the organization feels like his offensive production could return to All-Star form, as it was in 2019.

If that’s the case, then Joey Gallo is exactly the type of player that you’d want to keep in your lineup as you move forward with a rebuild.

So, what should the Rangers do with Joey Gallo?

At the end of the day, I think Joey Gallo will be playing right field for the Texas Rangers when Opening Day 2021 rolls around.

Gallo has said that he wants to be a Ranger and to help the team win in the future.

Ultimately, I think the Rangers value their big bopper too highly to get a return that would move the needle and force them to make a deal, and rightfully so.

But who can really predict these things when a team is rebuilding?

I’m sure we’ll revisit this topic at the 2021 trade deadline, but for now, I expect to see Joey Gallo in a Texas uniform for the foreseeable future.