Diamondbacks 2022 Player Reviews: Zac Gallen

A franchise record scoreless innings streak punctuated a career season.

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2022 Status: Final Pre Arbitration year, $745,600

Zac Gallen career and 2022 stats / Baseball Reference

2022 Review

New Jersey native Zac Gallen was drafted by the St. Louis Cardinals in the third round of the 2016 amateur draft.  His signing bonus was $563,000 after a successful  collegiate career with the University of North Carolina. 

After an impressive pro debut in rookie ball in 2016 with 15 strikeouts in nine innings, he pitched at three levels in 2017, making it all the way to Triple-A. For the year he was 10-8 with a 2.93 ERA and a 1.172 WHIP.  That caught the attention of the Miami Marlins, who got him in a trade along with Sandy Alcantara in exchange for Marcel Ozuna. 

Gallen pitched all of 2018 and the first half of 2019 for the Marlins Triple-A team in New Orleans. He was dominating at that level in 2019 with a 9-1 record and 1.77 ERA. He made his major league debut on June 20th of that year. After making seven starts and posting a 2.72 ERA, Gallen was on the move again, this time traded to the Diamondbacks at the deadline in exchange for top shortstop prospect Jazz Chisholm. 

Gallen continued his fine rookie season with the Diamondbacks, putting up a 2.89 ERA in eight more starts. In the Pandemic shortened 2020 season Gallen had a 2.75 ERA with a 3-2 record in twelve starts. But an issue started to emerge. Through that point in his career Gallen's FIP, or fielding independent pitching number was 3.64, nearly a run higher than his 2.78 ERA. The reason was too many walks. At 3.6/9, he sometimes would lose command suddenly.  

Gallen had a rough season by his standards in 2021, posting a 4.30 ERA against a 4.25 FIP. Three separate stints on the IL, due to arm, elbow and hamstring injuries limited him to just 23 starts. Then during the off season he suffered shoulder bursitis slowing him down in  spring training where he got into just two starts before the season started. On top of that he had his first start of the year pushed back due to a cut on his thumb. Finally on April 16th he joined the rotation. 

With his pitch count and innings being tightly controlled due to the shortened spring training, Gallen gave up just one run in his first three starts, 15 innings. Through his first seven starts he had a 1.14 ERA in 39 innings. On May 24th he got banged around however for 6 runs in 5.1 innings in a no decision. That started a stretch of 10 games leading up to the all star break where he posted a 5.30 ERA,  going 1-2 with seven no decisions. There were two more clunkers a couple of good starts, and some mediocre ones sprinkled in.  He was especially getting hurt by the long ball, giving up 10 homers in 54 innings. Still, he had a respectable 3.56 ERA with a 4-2 record up through the all star break. 

Gallen came out of the break determined to turn things around. Saying he did so would be the ultimate understatement. He started off by throwing seven shutout innings against the Nationals on July 22nd, picking up his first win since May 30th.  On August 2nd he gave up a run in the 6th inning of a 6-3 Diamondbacks victory over the Cleveland Indians. That was the last run he would give up until the 4th inning of a game in Colorado on September 11th. In between he did this:

Zac Gallen Six Scorless starts in a row / Baseball Reference

Not only did he not allow any runs in any of his next six starts, but he only allowed just 16 hits and 8 walks while striking out 46, an incredible run of dominance. After tacking on three more scoreless innings in that game against the Rockies before finally allowing three runs in the fourth inning, Gallen had thrown 44.1 consecutive scoreless innings, breaking a franchise record previously set by Brandon Webb. Michael McDermott gave us a great breakdown of the streak by the numbers which you'll want to check out. 

The streak earned him Pitcher of the month honors for the month of August. He finished out the year posting a 2.89 ERA over his last five starts, striking out 40 and walking just seven in 31 innings. Gallen ended up finishing 5th in the Cy Young Award voting, although a case could be made for him finishing as high as 2nd, in truth there were four tightly bunched pitchers behind unanimous winner and former teammate Alcantara. 

2023 Outlook 

Gallen has established himself as the ace of the Diamondbacks staff and a legitimate Cy Young contender. Entering his first year of arbitration in his age 27 season, Gallen is expected to earn approximately $4.5 million. 

Gallen possess a strong five pitch mix,  including Four Seamer, Curveball, Cutter, Change up, and Slider. He can throw all of them for strikes and presents a very difficult challenge for hitters. A very cerebral pitcher Gallen is often two steps ahead of the hitters in figuring out his approach. On top of that, he's even seen his fastball velocity increase over the years. He averaged 94.1 last year. 

Zac Gallen 4 Seam Fastball Increases / Baseball Savant

Gallen might face a couple of challenges with the new rule chances set to be implemented for the 2023 season. Gallen is known to be very methodical and slow and with runners on base. He has the widest range of seconds to deliver a pitch with runners on compared to bases empty of any pitcher in baseball. Among pitchers with at least 500 pitches thrown his 16.9 seconds "tempo" rank is just 86th among 215 pitchers. But with runners on that time jumps 10 seconds longer to 26.8. That's the 6th slowest time in MLB. 

In addition, Gallen led the league in pickoff attempts for the second year in a row. But pitchers will be limited to two attempts per batter. It can't be argued that he was enormously effective. Gallen had just nine steal attempts against him in 2022, and with runners on base his batting average against was just .197.  But he'll need to adjust his approach in these situations going forward. It's a good bet such a smart pitcher will find a way.