The pitcher with the longest scoreless innings streak in seven years doesn’t have exceptional speed, spin or movement. How does Zac Gallen do it?
The D-Backs ace must be doing something right as he went 41 1/3 innings without a run before his start on Sunday against the Rockies, the longest streak since Zack Greinkes in 2015. (The last run Gallen gave up came up with an RBI double by Luke Maile vs. Cleveland on Aug. 2.)
What Gall does tailoring his arsenal to the batsman, the situation, the point in the game. He’s great at using different looks to get the most out of his repertoire.
Here are three key ways Gallen has mixed things up to take his goalless streak to six straight starts.
• The cutter you see as a right-hander is not the same cutter you see as a left-hander.
Gallen’s cutter has been a much more important part of his repertoire this season than last season, making 2022 look more like his 2020 breakout season with Arizona.
The cutter isn’t a huge swing-and-miss or strikeout pitch, but Gallen gets a lot of outs with it — during his scoreless streak dating back to Aug. 8 against the Pirates, he’s hit more outs with his cutter than anyone else other secondary pitch, just more than his knuckle curve and alternation.
The way he gets all of these outs is by attacking righties one way with the cutter and lefties another way.
Against righties, he throws the cutter into the low outside corner, more like a slider. That means for right-handers they can handle two pitches that break off them down in the zone, Gallen’s cutter and his ankle turn.
Against lefties, he throws the cutter up and in, so it’s like an elevated fastball, but one that hits the batsman’s hands more. That means left-handers need to cover the entire reach of the hitting zone, because Gallen has courts that break into opposite corners – cutters that run into the top inside corner, switches that spill into the low outside corner.
• The curveball you see on the first pitch is not the same curveball you see on the last pitch.
Gallen also has two uses for his curveball. He can use it to get a Strike, or he can use it to get one cross out.
He likes to throw his curve to knock the hitter away with two shots. Roughly half of his 0-2 and 1-2 pitches during his scoreless streak were ankle turns.
But he also likes to throw his curve to get ahead of a batsman. During the streak, he launched about a quarter of the batters he faced with a curveball.
Gallen can do both because he knows how to locate. He keeps the early count curveballs in the zone and buries the two strike curveballs.
• The break-heavy pitch mix you see in the first inning is not the same as the fastball first pitch mix you see in the seventh.
All of Gallen’s six scoreless starts have played at least six innings, and he’s worked at least seven in five of the six. That means he sees racquets multiple times per game and successfully pulls them out multiple times per game.
The first two times through the job, he sticks to a consistent approach: about 45% four-seam machines, 25% curves, 20% cutters, and 10% changeovers.
But he’s hitting the same sluggers late in a game for the third time and attacking them with his fastball. The third time through the order, four-seam usage of galls increases by 10 percentage points to over 55%. And he’s not afraid to throw an elevated fastball right past a big bat.
He’ll still mix in a first-pitch curveball, cutter, or changeup to pitch backwards and drop a hammer curveball to aim for the strikeout as he progresses. But the rest of the time he attacks.
And with the way he’s able to spot his fastball, the Gallen makes it effective in his own way in the late game as well.
#key #stats #Gallens #goalless #run
Leave a Comment