For the better part of the past two seasons, Zac Gallen has been searching.
He is a “feel” pitcher. He is constantly trying to get his pitches to feel a certain way coming out of his hand. They rarely do.
On numerous occasions over the past two years — after both good starts and bad — he has lamented not having the right feel for some or even most of his arsenal.
Generally, Gallen has put up strong numbers anyway. Last year, he had a 3.47 ERA and finished third in NL Cy Young voting. He entered his Wednesday start against the San Francisco Giants with a 3.74 ERA in 2024.
Behind the scenes, however, the Diamondbacks’ ace has been dealing with a lot of frustration.
“Really inconsistent,” Gallen said of his 2024 season after what was likely his final regular season start on Wednesday. “Just tried to go out there every fifth day and just give us a chance to win, really.”
With the Diamondbacks’ postseason hopes hanging in the balance, Gallen did much more than that on Wednesday.
In six innings against the Giants, the D-backs right-hander allowed just one run on two hits. He had a season-high 11 strikeouts. The D-backs won, 8-2.
“He rose to the occasion,” manager Torey Lovullo said. “He’s got that gear. He’s got that extra ingredient that that all good starting pitchers have and you want coming onto the mound in a situation like this.”
With the win, the Diamondbacks gained a half-game on both the New York Mets and Atlanta Braves in the wild card race. They also gained a full game on the San Diego Padres, who lost to the Los Angeles Dodgers.
With three games left to play — all against the Padres at home this weekend — Fangraphs gives the Diamondbacks a 60.5 percent chance to make the postseason.
Gallen’s final line looked outstanding on Wednesday, but it did not begin that way.
After striking out Mike Yastrzemski to lead off the game, Gallen issued a walk to Heliot Ramos. It was his 17th first-inning walk of the season. Last year, he had only six.
Gallen managed to escape the opening frame unscathed. However, his second inning started with a lead-off walk that came around to score on a Tyler Fitzgerald RBI double. The Giants took a 1-0 lead.
After lasting just five innings in four of his previous five starts, Gallen appeared to be headed for another short night. He had 41 pitches through two innings. That, of course, would mean more work for a Diamondbacks bullpen that has been downright awful in September.
But after the Giants scored in the top of the second, the Diamondbacks responded with three runs in the bottom of the second. With a two-run cushion, Gallen turned more aggressive.
He wound up retiring 14 of the final 15 batters he faced, with eight strikeouts in that span.
“The biggest thing was just pitching to win, not pitching to not lose,” Gallen said after the game. “I feel like, when you get in a tight spot, you can be a little — I don’t want to say timid — but you’re maybe waiting for something to happen. I was trying to be on the attack, trying to be aggressive today, go out there and just take it to them.”
Gallen combined with Diamondbacks relievers Justin Martinez, A.J. Puk and Kevin Ginkel for 17 strikeouts on Wednesday. That’s the team’s highest strikeout total in a nine-inning game since Sept. 14, 2002, when Hall-of-Fame left-hander Randy Johnson had 17 in a complete-game, three-hit shutout against the Milwaukee Brewers.
“It was pretty amazing,” said Pavin Smith, who put the game away in the eighth with a pinch-hit, three-run homer. “[Gallen] was dominant. Defense didn’t have to do much. I was looking up at the scoreboard in the ninth and there were more strikeouts than outs made by the defense, so that’s always fun.”
Assuming that Gallen is not called upon to pitch on short rest this weekend, his 2024 regular season stat line is final. In 148 innings across 28 starts, he had a 3.65 ERA, 1.26 WHIP and 156 strikeouts to 54 walks.
By Gallen’s standards, it was a down season. His ERA and WHIP were both the second-worst marks of his career. He averaged 5.3 innings per start after averaging 6.2 in 2023. Injuries played a role.
Gallen exited one start early with general body cramps, and two others with hamstring injuries. The second led to a month-long stint on the injured list.
There is never a good time for your ace to get hurt, but the timing of the IL stint was particularly poor. “I felt like I was about to get on a roll,” Gallen said, “and then the hamstring goes out.”
While Gallen is far from satisfied with this 2024 season, he also feels that what matters most is whether his team won or lost when he was out there. On that front, Gallen was quite effective in 2024. He went 14-6 this year. The Diamondbacks went 18-10 in games that he started.
Gallen said that his Wednesday outing was the best he felt in a while. When asked how long it’s been since he really felt like himself over a significant stretch of time, he pointed to the second half of the 2022 season.
From early August to early September of that year, Gallen rattled off 44 1/3 consecutive scoreless innings, ousting Brandon Webb for the longest such streak in Diamondbacks history.
Gallen said he hasn’t really felt right — at least not consistently — ever since.
“I felt like I had some parts of that throughout the last 18 months,” he said. “But just for me, I’m looking for complete things. Maybe I’m looking for something that doesn’t necessarily exist, but it’s not a pursuit of perfection. I talk about the pursuit of excellence, and, for me, that’s the excellence part of it. I’ll never be satisfied until I get as close to that as I can.”
Gallen likens the lack of “feel” to an old car that just isn’t driving the way it normally does. As he’s gotten older, he has recognized how elusive that “feel” can be. But he is still driven to find it.
“I’ve driven the car for 29 years,” he said, “so I kind of know what the car is supposed to do. For me, that’s the feel I’m looking for. That’s the repeatability, being able to throw everything, in any count, in any spot, manipulate it how I want to.”
Sometimes, Gallen has to back off the constant tinkering that he does to find it. He wonders at times if it’s better for him to just go out and compete instead of making more tweaks.
But he also knows that he doesn’t have the kind of overpowering stuff that some other pitchers do. He needs to get the most out of what he has. And he is determined to get it, even if it feels like he is grasping at straws to find it.
Lovullo has had a front-row seat for it all. He views Gallen as a perfectionist.
“I can’t wait until he feels great,” Lovullo said with a smile. “When he says he’s not feeling 100 percent, it’s scary because he goes out and does something like this today without feeling 100 percent. But I think he wrestles with perfection, and that’s what makes him really good.”
This wasn’t the season that Gallen hoped he would have. But it concluded with perhaps his best start of the year. And, because of that, there might be more baseball to come in October.
Top photo: Rob Schumacher/The Republic
