Q&A: Zac Gallen talks cereal, ABS challenge system and more

After landing on the injured list with a hamstring injury on May 31, Diamondbacks ace Zac Gallen appears to be on track to return to the starting rotation this weekend against the Oakland Athletics.

With three-fifths of the team’s ideal starting rotation currently on the IL, the Diamondbacks could sure use him.

On Monday morning, PHNX Sports had an opportunity to speak with Gallen on the PHNX Diamondbacks Podcast. We discussed a wide range of topics, from a charity initiative that Gallen recently launched to which pitch he would steal from a teammate if he could.

Below is a transcription of the interview. The conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and conciseness.

Derek Montilla: How are you feeling? I, just like so many other D-backs fans, am looking forward to seeing you back on the mound.

Zac Gallen: Feeling pretty solid so far, progressing pretty well. Got a sim game [on Monday] as I imagine you guys already know. So, yeah, feeling pretty good so far. We’re heading in the right direction.

Montilla: I know you and your partners at Shamrock Farms are making an exciting announcement. Can you fill us in on that?

Gallen: For me, I’ve been here now for six years, just kind of starting to put down roots. I have a house here now, spending about 11 months of the year here, offseason included. So, just starting to feel a bit more a part of the community and just feeling how the community has been behind me, has been behind us the last couple years, I really wanted to get involved.

For me, it was partnering with Shamrock and St. Mary’s Food Bank and being able to help kids that are food insecure; especially in these summer months because it gets hot and kids don’t have school. They don’t have school lunches to look forward to. To be able to partner with St. Mary’s and Shamrock just has been unbelievable.

Shamrock is donating 2,300 gallons of milk to the cause, and they’ve been even better than I expected when our partnership started how many ever months ago it’s been now. I just felt like, because of my platform, I needed to get involved, and I wanted to get involved. I wanted to just be able to help in the community. Then, Shamrock was like, “Hey, we want to get involved too.” I’ve been truly humbled by them wanting to help out.

Jesse Friedman: For fans who might want to get involved themselves, how can they make a donation or volunteer some of their time?

Gallen: There’s two ways. You can go to mlb.com/dbacks/community. My charitable fund is under the player program page. If you want to make a financial donation, I’d be thrilled and humbled. If you can’t donate, you can also volunteer some of your time. For that, you can go to firstfoodbank.org. That’s with St. Mary’s. Both St. Mary’s and Shamrock are really unbelievable organizations. For me, this partnership has been incredible really.

Montilla: Well, it’s an elite partnership with the fact that you’re the Milkman, which, by the way, is a nickname that I have been defending. I will die on that hill for you no matter what. There will be no other milkmen. There’s just you as the Milkman.

Gallen: [Baltimore Orioles outfielder] Colton Cowser has been referred to as the milkman too, so I’m wondering — I guess I get it. It makes sense. But it is what it is.

Montilla: He can have his own thing! He can be the moo-man or whatever. But, since you are the Milkman, I did have to ask: Do you have a go-to cereal?

Gallen: I haven’t been on the cereal kick lately, but when I eat a cereal, I’m eating one cereal. I’ve gone from Captain Crunch Berries, I also had a Lucky Charm phase and then I was going with Cinnamon Toast Crunch. But my favorite no matter what is Frosted Cheerios.

Montilla: You didn’t give me any healthy cereals, and I appreciate that. I love that.

Gallen: That’s the thing — I don’t know that there’s a healthy cereal. At that point, why are you eating cereal? If you’re eating cereal, you’re eating something unhealthy.

Friedman: Yeah, I guess you just have to embrace it’s basically a dessert. Switching over to baseball here for a second, this season maybe hasn’t gone exactly how you would have drawn it up. But with you getting close to returning, Eduardo Rodriguez and Merrill Kelly getting back hopefully in the next month or two, it seems like you guys could be set up well for the second half of the season.

Gallen: Yeah, for sure. Obviously, this season hasn’t gone exactly how we planned considering how last year went. I think where we’re at speaks to the culture and depth in this organization.

You go to the World Series and then you sign some guys and you have guys you hope take the next step, and then you’re looking at how many ever guys are on the IL — I don’t know what the exact number was at one point in time — and they’re key pieces. So that’s always tough. But I think it just speaks to the culture that we’ve fostered in the clubhouse. 

Guys are able to hold the line of, like, ‘Okay, we got to just keep doing our part, we don’t need to do any more than what we were intended to do before.’ Maybe some guys got to step up just a little bit, but just to be able to hold the line until the reinforcements get back, you gotta tip your cap to guys like that. 

I think we were under .500 for over two months, and then you grind your way back, you know, to get through to .500 and then obviously lose a tough series in Philadelphia. But if you would have told us at the beginning of the year that, ‘Hey, we’re gonna miss this guy, this guy, this guy for this amount of time,’ I think a lot of people would take two games under .500 with half the season left to play and those guys looking to come back around the All Star break, whatever it is. 

Obviously it’s not ideal, but I’m proud of the guys for the way that they’ve kind of held the line.

Montilla: I was gonna ask your thoughts on the young pitchers that have had such a weird season; being called upon, being sent down, being called back up. It feels like they’ve responded well, and they’ve helped keep this team right there around .500.

Gallen: Yeah, for sure. I mean, you look at a guy like Slade [Cecconi]. Slade gets called up when Merrill gets hurt, and he throws really well. And he’s battling; he’s great the first time through the order and then he’s grinding the second and third time through the order. He has another couple of good starts. They send them down. Then, he has like two good starts down there, and then they call him back up, and he’s improved on what it was that got him sent down in the first place and he’s improved on the fly.

I think people underestimate how hard it is to be able to improve things as drastic as that. And that’s not even necessarily a physical change. That’s just a mental change of being like, ‘I’m good the first time through the order, but what do I need to change mentally?’ Maybe something physically, maybe it’s pitch mix, maybe its usage, whatever it is, how can I do that on the fly in the big leagues when I expected to be down in the minor leagues being able to work on this thing? That’s a tip of the cap to Slade. 

And then you got a guy in a similar situation with [Ryne Nelson]. Nellie’s changing his pitch mix, changing his usage, and he’s learning that on the fly in the big leagues, trying to get big league hitters out. It’s not easy. It’s a very lonely place when you’re out there and you’re grinding and you’re trying to figure things out at the big league level because you’re making mistakes and they’re making you pay. Especially at a time when your team’s counting on you to give them a solid start every fifth day to give them a chance to win. So yeah, those guys have stepped up tremendously. 

And then [Jordan Montgomery], at the same time, has been rounding into form. As monotonous as spring training is and as much as after, like, the 10th Day everyone’s like, ‘Alright, let’s get out of here, let’s start the real thing,’ there’s some value in having that spring training, seeing hitters every fifth day, going through the routine, building up that stamina — the season stamina, not necessarily your workload. Monty’s coming out of that. So, we’re rounding into shape. 

Obviously, the offense has held us afloat really, most of the time; the offense and the bullpen. So yeah, it’s been really good so far for what we’ve had to deal with.

Friedman: One guy you guys did get back from injury recently is Geraldo Perdomo. In Perdomo’s first game back, Montgomery couldn’t stop talking about how great it was to have him back in the clubhouse and how encouraging he is during outings. Can you speak to Perdomo and his impact on you as a starting pitcher when you’re out there?

Gallen: ‘Domo is great. If the ball is hit within a 10-foot radius of him from left to right, you know it’s an out. In terms of him just being out there and playing his position, he’s getting to a lot of balls. 

The thing about ‘Domo is that it doesn’t look very flashy as you would see with other infielders, but he’s making plays that a lot of guys are not making. Even if he’s not making the play and getting the out at first, he’s knocking the ball down and keeping the ball on the infield and potentially saving a run, or he’s throwing the cut-off to the right base; you know, a spot that saves a run or doesn’t allow a guy to advance 90 feet. 

He’s doing the small things that you might not understand if you’re not watching the game at a really granular level. On the physical side, that’s what ‘Domo means to team. 

At the same time, at the bottom of the order he stretches out the lineup. He’s like having another lead-off hitter at the bottom of the order. I think you guys have seen that now since he’s been back the last two weeks or whatever it is. He always seems to come up in a spot where you need a big hit, or you need a leadoff runner on base or you need to get the guy over. And he always seems to come through in that spot. 

Now, on the other side of it, the ‘Domo side of it, the clubhouse side of it, he’s great. Because his English is pretty solid, he’s a good bridge between the Latin guys and the English-speaking guys. Being able to talk, you know, whether it’s to Jordan Montgomery, who is a country boy from South Carolina, and he can talk to [Ketel] Marte, he can talk to [Eugenio] Suarez and he can talk to Justin Martinez. 

He’s able to kind of keep the heartbeat of the team. And I think that’s something that doesn’t necessarily get valued as much. Being in the clubhouse and being able to see it, you’re like, yeah, I get it, there’s this kind of — I don’t know the exact word for it — but there’s just this kind of stability when he comes back. And everyone’s like, ‘Alright, this guy’s like our heartbeat.’ And when your heartbeat comes back, it tends to do good things for you.

Montilla: We recently discussed that they are going to be exclusively using the ABS challenge system in Triple-A instead of the full ABS system. What are your thoughts on that? Do you think you’d like that versus going with an automated strike zone?

Gallen: I don’t know. I’ve never used either of them, so I wouldn’t be able to speak from experience. I will say that I’m conflicted because you are taking the human element out in terms of the automated strike zone. At the same time, there’s some spots where calls go one way or the other and it would be nice to get the right call in a big spot. 

Just from who I’ve talked to, the guys that have played in Triple-A and have used both, I think the challenge system seems like the more ideal way to do it, just because we have challenges on video replay and stuff like that. To have a full-on automated zone I think would be tough, because I think there’s going to be a lot of kinks. 

I think there’s still going to be kinks to work out with the challenge system, but that’s only happening so many times throughout the night. You know, when you’re going, ‘I didn’t like that pitch or that call, I’m going to challenge that,’ as opposed to 100-and-some-odd pitches every night on each side that the automated zone’s in play. So yeah, I don’t know. I’ll be curious to see what MLB decides to do with that.

Friedman: I have a bit of a crazy one here for you, Zac. If you could steal a pitch from one of your teammates, which pitch would you steal? You know, Merrill Kelly’s changeup, whatever comes to your mind. I guess you already have a changeup, so taking Merrill’s changeup probably wouldn’t make any sense at all.

Gallen: As good as Merrill’s changeup is, I’m content with mine. I need something that’s like a difference maker. So, my first thought was Justin Martinez’s fastball.

Montilla: YES!

Friedman: That feels like the right answer.

Gallen: Do I get to have my command?

Montilla: Yes.

Gallen: It’s not even close. We have some other guys with some really good stuff, but that I think is a separator. If I threw 100 miles an hour, it’d be such a separator. Yeah, I think I’m taking that.

Montilla: Thank you so much, man, we appreciate you stopping by. Thank you to Shamrock Farms and honestly thank you for everything you’re doing for the community. We really appreciate you being involved in programs like this.

Gallen: I appreciate it, guys. Thanks for having me.

Follow Jesse Friedman on X

Top photo: Rick Scuteri/USA TODAY Sports