Zac Gallen is not missing bats like he used to. Can he be effective without whiffs?

PHOENIX — Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher Zac Gallen knows he has to evolve.

The eighth-year veteran has not lost much velocity from his best seasons in 2022-23. His extension and arm angles are the same, and the movement on his fastball is comparable.

In a sport where throwing hard, generating spin and making batters whiff has become an obsession, Gallen no longer misses bats like he used to, especially with the fastball.

Gallen on Monday generated zero swings-and-misses on his four-seam fastball, which has a 4.6% whiff rate this season, per Statcast. In 2022, that whiff rate was at 19.7%. Even last year, it was 12.9%.

For the veteran right-hander, the focus has been on generating the timely whiff rather than piling them up.

“League-wide, guys are throwing harder. They’re training at such an earlier age from a stuff standpoint, from a swing-and-miss standpoint,” Gallen told Arizona Sports’ Burns & Gambo.

“I think for me, I don’t have an exact answer of I really need to get a lot more whiffs. I’ve never really been a crazy whiff percentage guy, I think I’ve just gotten whiffs in spots where I need them. … I think just suppressing contact, getting the ball on the ground and getting whiffs when I need to. I think it’s a work in progress in the sense of we’re just trying to figure out which ways we’re going to be able to attain that whiff percentage when I need it. But I’m not fully leaning into I need to go out there and get 30 a night.”

Gallen has made an adjustment with his pitch mix, utilizing his slider as a putaway pitch more so than his curveball. His slider has been one of the most effective in the league at missing bats at 35%.

But this is a pitcher who had one of the most effective fastballs in the league, a pitch batters hit .165 against in 2022 when he finished fifth for the Cy Young award. It helped him finish third for the Cy Young in 2023. His fastball effectiveness has declined over the years, but what’s the explanation for the dramatic drop in whiffs?

“I think probably getting a little bit kind of tunneled in our locations with it,” pitching coach Brian Kaplan told Arizona Sports. “Because it’s had a little more cut of late. Spent maybe too much time on the glove side part of the plate into lefties, where you’re not typically going to see a lot of miss. A lot of foul balls in there.

“The contact’s been weaker out over the plate to righties, not as many barrels. But miss is either elevated or kind of up-and-away to lefties, away to lefties or up-and-in to righties. It hasn’t been a location we’ve been able to get to as much as we want to. So probably just throwing it more in locations where you’re not going to get a ton of miss.”

Kaplan said Gallen has done a better job of attacking the strike zone and not picking at it compared to last season, when walks piled up on the right-hander in a disastrous first four months.

He is drawing more ground balls, as he is looking for weak contact with the fastball and whiffs with the breaking balls. Kaplan said Gallen has made a grip adjustment with his pointer finger on curveballs, and the feedback has been positive — the curveball is a pitch that has looked different this season from 2022-23, with less horizontal and vertical movement.

Last year showed a blinking red light that Gallen needed to make changes. The league is showing higher octane stuff than it had a few years ago. Gallen’s fastball velocity was in the 54th percentile in 2022. This year, it is in the 30th percentile.

Also, veteran batters have simply seen him a lot at this point.

Take the Los Angeles Dodgers: Mookie Betts, Will Smith, Freddie Freeman and Max Muncy have a combined 116 at-bats against Gallen.

“I think just understanding, evolving in the sense of I’ve been around this league for a while. I’ve faced a lot of these guys numerous times,” Gallen said.

“So they’ve seen the ways I get them out, the ways that they’ve had success against me. So just trying to be a little more creative, more creative with sequencing and tunneling and certain ways to be able to protect pitches in the strike zone. And then just utilizing different pitches, different shapes a little differently.”

His ERA is 4.78 with predictive metrics suggesting that is pretty on target (4.62 FIP, 5.17 xERA). Those are No. 5 starter statistics.

Gallen said he is not looking for a lightbulb moment where he figures it all out. His goal is trend in the right direction in order to stack good days on the bump, making sure his delivery is in a spot where he can make adjustments pitch to pitch as opposed to the troubles he ran into during a frustrating 2025 season.

Manager Torey Lovullo said Gallen has to avoid the one or two mistakes that can butcher a strong outing, executing in high leverage moments.

He is going to have to for team and personal reasons.

The rest of the rotation has performed very well lately, with Gallen being the least consistent of the bunch. The Diamondbacks are in a key stretch of the season to make up ground in the pennant race. Staff ace Corbin Burnes continues to eye a July return. And Gallen is in a contract year after a disappointing first free agency experience.

Gallen’s next start in on Saturday against the Colorado Rockies.

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