MESA, Ariz. -- On Thursday afternoon against the Oakland A's, Joey Gallo, who has become an everyday exhibition game player, continued a spring training chock full of everything but contact.

He walked once and struck out twice, and 10 of his first 12 spring training plate appearances have resulted in one or the other.

And yet, according to manager Jeff Banister, Gallo is having an impressive training camp.

"The things that really matter are what happens from 6 a.m. until 1 p.m. before we play," Banister said. "Not what happens after 1 p.m. We're challenging guys with a lot of things all day long. The games are important, but not the most important.

"Joey has been great at that. He's been engaged in the right things, working and learning. You see that expressed in his face."

As he was saying this Thursday morning, Gallo, 23, was taking batting practice. The manager pointed out how easily Gallo was swinging, rather than trying to force the kind of batting-practice homers that make teammates holler expletives.

When Gallo came out of the cage, he was not flexing his bat or shaking his head or grimacing in frustration, all looks he has regularly displayed in his brief major league career that is full of strikeouts (76), walks (20), home runs (seven) and not much else.

In other words, he wasn't consumed by his swing, nor trying to fix something in the two or three minutes between rounds of swings. He was simply doing the work and, to borrow from Jason Garrett, trusting the process.

For Gallo, that is always going to be the challenge.

He has enormous power but also is 6-5, which gives pitchers a huge strike zone to work with, and he has a long swing. Strikeouts will pile up. In parts of two major league seasons, he is averaging a strikeout every 2.01 plate appearances. Consider that for any player with at least 2,000 major league at-bats over the last 100 years, the worst rate is a strikeout every 3.04 plate appearances by Russell Branyan. The numbers could be ugly.

The Rangers are confident, though, the homers could pile up, too.

It's up to Gallo to believe that.

It is an area in which he has failed badly during parts of two major league seasons. Much of that can be blamed on youth. The Rangers rushed him to the majors in desperation after an Adrian Beltre injury in 2015.

He made but a token appearance last year, going 1 for 25 with 19 strikeouts. The one hit, of course, was a homer.

After every strikeout, though, he seemed to come back to the dugout grinding his teeth to powder and twisting his face into a real-life version of Edvard Munch's meme-ified to death work of art, The Scream.

"When things aren't going right, I've always assumed something was wrong," Gallo said. "I've always said I need to do something. I was always fixing something. Sometimes it's just the result that is bad. It's really about being strong and staying with the approach and the routine. That's very important. There have been times in the past where I've just gotten into modes where it is just like I'm trying not to strike out. That only makes it worse.

"You go up there and you strike out a couple of times and you say, 'Stop swinging so hard.' You are young and listening to everybody and trying to do what everybody suggests and then, before you know it, you don't even know your swing anymore.

"I think I've learned not to veer off, to stay the course. I think I've grown."

The early exhibition returns will test that. Gallo is 1 for 11 through his first five games. On Thursday, he took a called third strike to end the first inning, then drew a four-pitch walk his second time up. He struck out again looking in his third at-bat and asked umpire Dan Bellino about the pitch location.

He's going to get lots more at-bats this spring, and he's going to strike out a bunch more, too. When the spring is over, he's all but certain to head to Triple-A Round Rock, because there aren't enough at-bats available to him in the majors.

There will come a time, though. Perhaps sometime this year. Perhaps at the start of 2018.

To succeed long term whenever the time comes, Gallo must continue to buy into the process rather than simply the short-term results. This is where the Rangers are certain they've seen growth in Joey Gallo.

"It's not about what he's done, but how he's gone about it," said hitting instructor Anthony Iapoce. "The look in his eye, the way he is acting, it tells me he's all in. There is no doubt."

To be the guy he's always been projected to be, the doubt can't creep in, no matter what the box score says.

Twitter: @Evan_P_Grant