Do the Minnesota Twins have 2 Joey Gallo's?
Entry posted by Ted Wiedmann in Core Players ·
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In my previous piece I talked about how Alex Kirilloff may fit into the Minnesota Twins’ long term plans and what his outlook could be in the Major Leagues. For this article I want to look at the Twins other touted corner outfield prospect, one who has spent much of his professional career being compared to Kirilloff; Trevor Larnach.
Trevor Larnach is another player the Twins likely view as a core piece as they build for 2023 and beyond. Making a name for himself for his refined approach and raw power, Larnach found himself a top 50 prospect in all of baseball and as high as no. 34 on Fangraphs; with some sites ranking him even higher than Alex Kirilloff. It took Larnach only 183 minor league games to get called up to the Majors in 2021 where he showed flashes of that power and developed approach before injury issues started to affect his production; he was ultimately sent down to AAA. 2022 was a similar story for Larnach as he once again had some very encouraging moments before an abdominal injury ended his season in late June.
As stated in my previous piece, injuries have a high variance and almost no predictability so I won’t spend much time on them for a future outlook of a player. Although they have been present in Larnach’s career so far their unstable nature offers little help if you are trying to guess a player’s future.
Between 2021 and 2022 Larnach has played almost a full season of games, 130 to be exact. It’s not a huge sample but more to work with than some other Twins prospects, so let’s see what we can find when we dig into it. Through 481 plate appearances Larnach is slashing .226/.316/.371 with 12 home runs, 46 RBI, 95 wRC+ and a 1.7 fWAR. Nothing to brag about but solid production to this point.
I probably should’ve addressed the title of the article by now but I tend to tangent. In my opinion, Trevor Larnach has a career outlook very similar to Joey Gallo, who the Twins just recently signed. While not as extreme of a three true outcome player, I think there are undeniable parallels in their games that we cannot ignore.
Let’s compare some numbers shall we?
Larnach: .226/.316/.371, 10.2% BB%, 33.5% K%, 95 wRC+, 12 DRS/1,000 innings, 2.1 fWAR/162
Gallo: .199/.325/.469, 14.8% BB%, 37.3% K%, 110 wRC+, 10 DRS/ 1,000 innings 3.2 fWAR/162
It’s not a perfect match on the surface but when we dig a little deeper the numbers get even more similar.
Batted ball data (per Statcast)
Larnach: 116 MPH Max exit velocity, 90.0 avg EV, 42.2% hard hit%, 35.4 SwSp% (ball with a batted launch angle between 8 and 32 degrees)
Gallo: 117.5 MPH Max exit velocity, 92.5 avg EV, 49.1% hard hit%, 33.3 SwSp%
But wait there’s more! Let’s look at their plate discipline numbers:
Larnach: 62.3% Z-Swing%, 73.1 Z-Contact%, 25.1 Chase%, 31.7% Chase Contact%, 43.0% Swing%, 39.4% Whiff%
Gallo: 69.3% Z-Swing, 67.5% Z-Contact, 24.8% Chase%, 37.1% Chase Contact%, 45.0% Swing%, 41.2% Whiff%
It’s important to remember that we are still comparing a very small sample of Trevor Larnach to a very large sample of Joey Gallo so in a year or two this could look ridiculous. However, that being said, when I see the career numbers of both Gallo and Larnach they look like very similar players. They both have tremendous raw power combined with good plate discipline and they both are extremely prone to swing and miss. While Larnach has yet to prove he is capable of batted balls turning into extra base hits (.371 career SLG), he has shown in his young career he consistently finds the barrel and hits the ball hard when he does make contact. Larnach is also a considerably worse athlete than Gallo and is unlikely to provide the defensive or base running upside that Gallo does. However, Larnach is, as traditionalists like to say, a more “pure hitter” than Gallo. His pull% 6.1% lower than Gallo’s and his batting average on balls in play (BABIP) is .331; Joey Gallo’s career BABIP is .257 making it likely that Larnach will hit for a much higher average.
It may not be a perfect one for one comparison between two players, but I think there are enough similarities in Trevor Larnach’s game to Joey Gallo’s that it was noteworthy. I doubt Larnach will ever reach the extremes that Gallo has normalized in his career so if you are not a fan of Gallo I wouldn’t worry too much, I believe there are aspects of Larnach’s play that will prevent him from reaching those anomic heights. What do you think of Trevor Larnach? Is my comparison accurate or am I way off base on this one? Let me know what you think.
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