D-backs offense unable to back solid Gallen outing against Rangers

PHOENIX — Zac Gallen spun the ball nicely on Tuesday evening, but the Arizona Diamondbacks’ (45-94) bats were unable to turn his quality start into a win, losing to the Texas Rangers (50-88) 3-1.  

Gallen pitched 6.2 innings, struck out eight, walked none and only had one difficult inning when he gave up three runs in the fourth.  

“He did a great job outside of the fourth inning,” said D-backs manager Torey Lovullo. “If you’re looking at the entire day, he pitched into the seventh inning, gave up three runs. I think overall, it was a solid outing. … Unfortunately, we couldn’t give him a little run support to make that look like it was a much better outing.” 

The D-backs offense only managed one run on three hits with the run coming in the third inning on a sacrifice fly by second baseman Josh Rojas.  

“Just a little bit of too much aggressiveness,” Lovullo said. “(Jordan Lyles) was, and we were aware of it, there was a mixture of the four-seam fastball, the two-seam fastball and then the changeup. The two-seam and the changeup blended together. And I just think some of our left-handed hitters were just a little bit anxious in certain swing counts. And with all due respect to that pitcher, he went seven innings and threw roughly 95 pitches.

“I do want to be respectful but I felt like our guys if we were patient, waited certain pitches out in certain counts … I felt like we could have done a better job.” 

The loss is the D-backs’ ninth in their last 10 games. This comes after a stretch from Aug. 12-26 when they were 9-5.  

Lovullo attributed the slide back to the woes of earlier in the season to a lack of solid offense, defense and pitching. He said the D-backs defense has been “a little bit sloppy,” the offense has been “inconsistent” and they “haven’t been executing” from a pitching standpoint. 

Another factor in the loss may have been the lack of energy at Chase Field on Tuesday. The crowd seemed much lower than the 8,758 announced with many fans in the ballpark in attendance to support the Rangers.

Gallen expressed that it was difficult to have energy with the crowd so small.

“We kind of joked that we think we might have had more cardboard cutouts here last year than we did (fans) at the game tonight,” Gallen said. “It was a little bit tough but it’s kind of what happens if two teams that are struggling (play each other). You’re not going to get much energy in the building.”  

Gallen took the loss in the game. He fell to 2-9 on the season. Lyles picked up the win after pitching seven innings of one-run ball in relief of opener Spencer Howard. Lyles improved to 8-11 on the season.  

The D-backs and the Rangers wrap up their two-game series on Wednesday at 12:40 p.m. Arizona is scheduled to start Luke Weaver (3-3, 4.11 ERA) while Texas is set to start Kohei Arihara (2-3. 6.19 ERA). All the action can be heard on ESPN 620 AM and 98.7 FM-HD2.