Asst. GM Fitzgerald: Zac Gallen’s stubbornness a cause for recent struggles

Although the Arizona Diamondbacks have been on a tear since June 29, ace Zac Gallen has not.

Since that date, the D-backs have been one of the best teams in baseball at 32-13. Since Gallen’s return from the IL on June 29, a 5.24 ERA, 1.66 WHIP and 35 strikeouts to 21 walks in 46 1/3 innings cloud his early-season success.

Gallen’s most recent outing, in which he allowed four runs on nine hits over five innings against the Tampa Bay Rays, raised the right-hander’s ERA to 3.85 across 110 innings this season.

For someone who’s placed in the top five of NL Cy Young voting these last two seasons, it wouldn’t be a surprise if Gallen’s struggles come across as a cause for concern amid the team’s recent success.

Nonetheless, D-backs assistant GM Mike Fitzgerald seems to have pinpointed the problem: Gallen’s stubbornness out on the mound.

“I think guys that are so talented and so good can possibly get fixated on the specific plan that they want to attack for how to get guys out, and that plan has been really rewarding for Zac (Gallen) in many ways,” Fitzgerald told Arizona Sports’ Wolf & Luke on Wednesday. “I think in the games where he gets clipped a little bit, there’s a stubbornness to wanting to get a guy out a certain way.

“… When you have as many weapons in the repertoire that he does, there’s probably some opportunities there to say ‘Hey, you know what, this was my plan coming in of how I wanted to get this guy out, I’m going to read and react to this six-pitch at-bat and make a slight adjustment off of it.’ I think he’s fully capable of doing that.”

The Diamondbacks are neck-and-neck with the San Diego Padres and Los Angeles Dodgers for the NL West lead, trailing the Dodgers by four games with 34 games left ahead of Wednesday’s matchup with the Miami Marlins.

With the recent success of starter Ryne Nelson, the Diamondbacks are currently running a six-man rotation, tossing the possibility of using Nelson out of the bullpen. A rotation of Gallen, Merrill Kelly, Eduardo Rodriguez, Jordan Montgomery and Brandon Pfaadt was what the team aimed for when it signed Rodriguez and Montgomery during free agency.

But a struggling ace in Gallen wasn’t what the D-backs nor the Valley was expecting, yet the team is confident that the ace can turn things around as the pennant race looms.

“We still think from an under-the-hood perspective of all the ingredients being there for him to give us a really strong final seven, eight starts,” Fitzgerald said. “We think he’s going to put us in a really good position to do that.”

The Diamondbacks wrap up their road trip with a series against the Boston Red Sox starting Friday before coming home to face the New York Mets and Los Angeles Dodgers.

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