The Diamondbacks and right-hander Zac Gallen have avoided arbitration, per Mark Feinsand of MLB.com. The Boras Corporation client will make a salary of $10.011MM this year.
Gallen, 28, has established himself as an ace-level pitcher and is coming off a second consecutive excellent season. In 2023, he made 34 starts and tallied 210 innings with a 3.47 earned run average. He struck out 26% of batters that came to the plate against him, walked just 5.6% of them and kept 41.8% of balls in play on the ground.
The righty was then a key part of the Diamondbacks making a surprise charge to the World Series. Though his ERA ticked up to 4.54 in the postseason, he logged 33 2/3 innings over six starts, a notable workload for a club without much pitching depth.
He was a third-round pick of the Cardinals but he was twice traded to end up in the desert. He was one of four players that went to the Marlins in the Marcell Ozuna trade and later was flipped to the Snakes for Jazz Chisholm Jr. He first qualified for arbitration going into 2023 and played last year on a $5.6MM salary, now getting into eight-figure territory. He will be due one more raise in 2025 before he’s slated for free agency.
MLB Top 100 Commenter
How Gallant of them!
CaseyAbell
$10.011 million? I guess that extra eleven thousand was important for some reason.
CardsFan57
Not bad for his second year of arbitration.
Yankee Clipper
Imagine if he keeps pitching this way…
AIMLB
How do the Dbacks teach their slider? Ginkel and Pfaadt found one last year.
DarkGhost
Bret strom is the pitching coach, widely regarded as one of the best in the game.
AIMLB
Why didn’t Strom teach Ginkel and Pfaadt and the whole pitching staff in 2022? Horrible!!!!
AIMLB
Before 2017 Strom was a nothing avg pitching coach. His team was taught a non traditional slider and he’s riding that guys credit. Why do you thing Matt Blake and Ethan Katz got hired? It’s information not who teaches it.
AIMLB
Brent Strom obviously learned a non traditional slider in 2017 cause he would have taught it a decade earlier.
Why didn’t Strom use it when he played. Look at his k’s per 9.
Putrid.
HBan22
The DBacks need to try hard to lock this guy up for the long run. Going to be easier said than done with Boras as his agent though.
acoss13
He’s going to be expensive, especially if he continues to post excellent results along with him staying healthy, but yeah him being a Boras client he will probably want even more.
highheat
I must say, I really like the way Mike Hazen handles arbitration; does his best to avoid hitting arbitration by signing fair deals, and if he can’t?
He sits down with guys after the hearing and let’s them air their grievances with how it went down; arbitration is inherently a nasty process.