Rangers were this close to sending Gallo to Triple A

Adrian Beltre, all 38 years of him, remains the Texas Rangers’ best player.

He’s a hitting machine and human Hoover at third base.

With 3,000 hits in the bank, Beltre will be entering the National Baseball Hall of Fame in his first year on the ballot.

So to call the calf injury he suffered in early April, the day before he was eligible to be reinstated from the disabled list, a blessing sounds outlandish.

Well, it is.

However ...

Without it, the Rangers wouldn’t have had Joey Gallo, and his 32 home runs, for the entire season. Without that initial Beltre calf strain the final week of spring training and without the second one April 8, the one that kept him out two months, Gallo likely could have started the season at Triple A.

At the very least, he would have been sent to Round Rock for an indefinite stretch had Beltre been able to come off the DL after missing the game’s first five games.

“We hadn’t made a final decision, but we were pretty well committed to not keep him unless he was going to get regular playing time,” general manager Jon Daniels said of Gallo. “There was not a clear path to that at that point before the injury.”

Gallo entered Friday riding an eight-game hitting streak, led the majors with seven August home runs and had connected in seven of his past eight games. The Houston Astros figured him out, but they couldn’t figure out Cole Hamels in a 6-4 Rangers victory.

Gallo had a solid spring and impressed enough to be considered a part of the mix in left field, along with Ryan Rua, Jurickson Profar and Delino DeShields. Gallo was a candidate for the Opening Day roster whether Beltre was healthy or hurt, and if he hadn’t made it, he might have been the last player cut.

Nevertheless, he and infielder Drew Robinson had spend the spring searching for housing in Round Rock and found a place where they would live. Both made the Opening Day roster, but Robinson lasted only a week.

That’s the track Gallo was on, too, until Beltre’s misfortune.

“Yeah, I’ve thought about that,” Gallo said. “I knew I was going to go there, but he got hurt and gave me an opportunity to play up here again and see what I’ve got. It was close to me not being here. Thank God I am.”

Gallo mentioned the key word, “opportunity.” That’s what the Beltre injury was. Not a blessing.

“Joey ran with it,” Daniels said.

Gallo’s biggest improvement has been controlling the strike zone. He’s always going to strike out, but he is also chasing less out of the strike zone and finding his way on base via walks.

The 48 he had drawn entering the opener against the Astros ranked second on the club, behind only Shin-Soo Choo, and his .325 on-base percentage was higher than ones posted by Nomar Mazara, Mike Napoli, Rougned Odor and Robinson Chirinos.

“I like to look at it as, ‘Man, has this kid started that grow-up process right here in front of it,’ ” manager Jeff Banister said. “We’re watching it. We’re watching the control of the strike zone. We’re watching the walks. We’re watching balls travel out of center field that are just dynamic.”

The Rangers never seriously considered sending Gallo down after Beltre returned, even though his average was below .200 for the majority of the season and as the strikeouts piled up during a rough June. But Gallo kept hitting for power and showing his value in other facets, with speed on the bases and versatility in the field.

Once Beltre did return at the end of May, Gallo was too valuable in a struggling lineup to ship out. The Rangers also liked the idea of Gallo staying in the majors, hopefully in a playoff race, as they look into the future.

In essence, by avoiding Triple A altogether, Gallo has skipped a grade. He wasn’t part of the 2017 plans entering spring training, and now it’s difficult to imagine him not a part of the plans the next several seasons.

“It’s been great so far this year, just learning every day,” Gallo said. “I’m learning the league. I’m getting more confident in myself. It’s been good.”

But he was this close — a fresh Beltre calf injury the day before he was to come off the disabled list for the sixth game of the season — to spending at least some time at Triple A Round Rock.

“It’s such a reminder that you can map things out on paper, but people come at their own pace,” Daniels said. “We all have a different ‘Ah-ha’ moment. Some people never do. But it’s hard for it to work out perfectly.

“We felt pretty confident Joey would be a pretty good player, but exactly when and exactly how quickly he reaches his potential, you can only control that to a certain degree.”

This story was originally published August 11, 2017 at 11:03 PM with the headline "Rangers were this close to sending Gallo to Triple A."