Ace Gallen motivated by Cy Young results
It doesn’t take much to light a fire under Zac Gallen, which is why it is no surprise the results of last year’s National League Cy Young Award voting are serving as an early motivator for the Diamondbacks’ star pitcher.
“Definitely. Absolutely,” Gallen said. “There’s definitely some motivation there. Ten people didn’t put my name on a ballot. They’ll be on a list somewhere. They’re on a bulletin board somewhere. I’ll find any little slight I can to throw up there. Whatever I’ve got to do. It’s a long season. You’ve got to find ways to motivate yourself.”
Gallen is coming off the best season of his career. He was fourth in the NL with a 2.54 ERA and led the league with a 0.92 WHIP. He was sixth in the league among pitchers in wins above replacement, per Baseball-Reference.
Gallen did not argue he should have won the award, which was unanimously awarded to the Marlins’ Sandy Alcantara, but he clearly believes he belonged somewhere among the five slots available on each ballot.
Either way, Gallen expects to build off what he accomplished in the second half, during which he logged a 44-1/3 inning scoreless streak, the longest in club history and the seventh-longest in baseball history. He said he thinks a few things clicked that he can carry into this season.
“I think there’s a mentality, there’s an approach, there’s an understanding of pitch mix, usage, stuff like that,” Gallen said. “I think there were some mechanical things that clicked, too.”
As such, Gallen said he isn’t looking to make any major adjustments this season, though he did say he started throwing earlier in the offseason than in previous years.
“When I was younger I could kind of take off two or three months and start right back up,” Gallen, 27, said. “I’m starting to realize that’s just not the case, so I only took a few weeks off this year, like four to five weeks.”
‘Deal with it’
When asked about what seems to be a negative reaction from some veteran players about baseball’s new pace-of-play rules, Gallen said it stems from players feeling “slighted” by the commissioner’s office.
“They came to us and asked us what we thought of some of the rules changes, we tried to give our feedback and then they just unilaterally put things in place,” Gallen said. “I think a lot of guys felt like they were not heard, really. The players want the game to go, they want it to be an enjoyable product to watch, but when you kind of spit in their face, you ask them for things that may make it a little bit easier for the players to adjust, they didn’t listen to that.”
Gallen is notorious for picking to first — he led the majors with 144 pickoff attempts last season — but he didn’t seem overly concerned about his ability to adjust to the new rules that limit the numbers of times a pitcher can disengage with the rubber.
“That’s part of my process of slowing the game down,” he said. “It’s like, you’re going to go at my pace. I’m not going to let the game speed up on me. I’ll make a little bit of an adjustment but I’m not too worried about it.”
He sounded more annoyed at not being allowed to step off at a moment when he isn’t on the same page as his catcher.
“It is what it is,” he said. “We’re going to have to deal with it.”
Outfield alignment
Though the Diamondbacks have a versatile group of outfielders, Lovullo said the club has them penciled into specific spots to open the year. Corbin Carroll will see most of his time in left, Alek Thomas in center, and Jake McCarthy in right, Lovullo said.
He said the alignment is mostly due to familiarity. “That’s where they spent a lot of their time last year,” he said.
Carroll and McCarthy will each get time in center field, Lovullo said, but when Thomas plays he will almost certainly push the others to the corners.
Lourdes Gurriel Jr., Pavin Smith and Kyle Lewis are seen as corner outfield options, though all could figure into the mix at designated hitter, as well.
Short hops
The Diamondbacks won their arbitration case against third baseman Josh Rojas, who will be paid $2.575 million rather than the $2.9 million he had been seeking.
Atsuya Furuta, who is regarded as perhaps the best catcher in Japanese baseball history, began a stint in Diamondbacks camp as a guest coach on Thursday. Furuta was invited by Lovullo; the two were teammates with the Yakult Swallows in Lovullo’s final year as a player in 2000. “It was so good to see him,” Lovullo said. “It’s been 23 years.”