Joey Meneses agreed to a two-year, $40 million contract with the New York Mets.
The Washington Nationals and outfielder Joey Gallo have agreed to a one-year deal worth $5 million, per Andrew Golden of the Washington Post.
The contract, which is pending a physical, also contains an additional $1 million in performance bonuses.
The 30-year-old Gallo posted 21 home runs and 40 RBI in 111 games for the Minnesota Twins last season. He hit .177 with a .741 OPS.
The nine-year MLB veteran is feast-or-famine at the dish, sporting lifetime per-162 game averages of 37 home runs and 224 strikeouts. His strikeout rate is second to none among those with at least 3,000 plate appearances, per Eric Cross of FTN Fantasy and Rotoballer.
However, Gallo fared quite well in the field, notably winning a pair of Gold Gloves in 2020 and 2021. He’s also adept at drawing walks and getting on base, doing so at a .323 career clip.
The two-time All-Star joins a Nats team that just finished last in the National League East with a 71-91 record.
As Mark Zuckerman of MASN noted, Gallo helps address the team’s need for left-handed power, and he’s “likely” to play left field in Washington while taking over for Joey Meneses at times at first base.
However, it’s possible that Gallo doesn’t make it through the entire season in Washington. Zuckerman explained why:
“With top outfield prospects James Wood and Dylan Crews likely to make their major-league debuts sometime this season, Gallo could wind up a candidate to be dealt at the trade deadline, the Nats hoping he can generate interest from a contender just as third baseman Jeimer Candelario did last year after signing a comparable $5 million deal.”
For now, though, it appears Gallo will be manning left field as the Nats look to move up the standings. Opening Day for Washington will be Thursday, March 28 in Cincinnati.
If Joey Meneses were a flower, he would blossom on Christmas. In baseball, it’s one thing to be a late bloomer. It’s another to reach age 30 with zero MLB home runs, as Meneses did, then try to create a meaningful career.
Meneses is batting .320 with 12 homers, 29 RBI and a .922 on-base-plus-slugging percentage in his first 49 games as a rookie with the Nationals. Since he was called up Aug. 2 as a top-of-the-order bat after the Juan Soto trade, he’s tied for seventh in MLB in hits.
Someday, Joey may illustrate one of baseball’s most heartwarming, rare but recurring storylines: the player who won’t quit, figures out how to hit in his late 20s and keeps belting until he’s 35 or even 40.
Someday, Joey may illustrate one of baseball’s most heartwarming, rare but recurring storylines: the player who won’t quit, figures out how to hit in his late 20s and keeps belting until he’s 35 or even 40.
The Nats should grasp that one advantage of being awful — an MLB-worst 54-101 through Thursday — is that you can give yourself a full chance to be lucky with a long shot such as Meneses. Your top hitting prospects at corner positions in the minors are still infants. You can give Meneses all of 2023 — or longer — to pan out. If he does, you win big — and do it cheaply.
Consider: When they reached their 29th birthdays, ex-National Jayson Werth, Justin Turner, Raúl Ibañez, Melvin Mora, Matt Stairs, Hank Sauer and Charlie Maxwell had a paltry 100 MLB home runs combined. After that date, they hit 1,470 more homers.
Nelson Cruz, a current National, hit 394 of his 459 homers after turning 30. Others with more than 75 percent of their homers starting in their age-29 season include David Ortiz, Andrés Galarraga, José Bautista and Dante Bichette, averaging 314 homers each from that point on.
