{"id":473717,"date":"2026-02-14T03:51:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-14T03:51:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/473717\/"},"modified":"2026-02-14T03:51:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-14T03:51:12","slug":"diamondbacks-to-re-sign-zac-gallen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/473717\/","title":{"rendered":"Diamondbacks To Re-Sign Zac Gallen"},"content":{"rendered":"

8:23pm: It\u2019s a $22.025MM guarantee, reports Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic<\/a>. That matches the price of the qualifying offer. However, roughly $14MM of the salary is deferred, Rosenthal adds<\/a>.<\/p>\n

8:10pm: It\u2019ll be a one-year contract, reports Nick Piecoro of The Arizona Republic<\/a>. The signing is still pending a physical.<\/p>\n

8:08pm: The D-Backs are closing in on a deal to re-sign Zac Gallen<\/a>, reports Steve Gilbert of MLB.com<\/a>. The veteran righty has had an extended stay on the open market after declining a qualifying offer at the beginning of the offseason.<\/p>\n

Gallen is coming off a down year that clearly sapped a lot of his appeal on the open market. He entered the season as a strong candidate to command upwards of $100MM once he hit free agency. Gallen stayed healthy and took all 33 turns through the rotation, but he had the worst rate stats of his career. He turned in a personal-high 4.83 earned run average with a career-worst 21.5% strikeout rate.<\/p>\n

The season started especially poorly, as Gallen allowed at least five earned runs per nine innings in each of the first four months. He took a 5.40 ERA into the All-Star Break and had a 5.60 mark across 127 innings at the trade deadline. The D-Backs were aggressive sellers, moving\u00a0Josh Naylor<\/a>,\u00a0Eugenio Su\u00e1rez<\/a>,\u00a0Merrill Kelly<\/a> and\u00a0Shelby Miller<\/a>. They didn\u2019t find an offer they liked on Gallen more than the draft pick they\u2019d collect if he signed elsewhere after rejecting the qualifying offer.<\/p>\n

Arizona reportedly was concerned about overworking young pitchers down the stretch, so they also got some benefit out of holding Gallen for the innings alone. He performed better after the deadline, tossing quality starts in eight of his last 11 outings. The 30-year-old turned in a 3.32 ERA over his final 65 innings. The Diamondbacks went 7-4 in those games, part of the reason they were able to hang in the Wild Card picture until the final weekend despite the July selloff.<\/p>\n

While it was an encouraging last couple months, it wasn\u2019t exactly a return to peak form. Gallen only struck out 20% of opponents during that stretch. He was helped a lot by a .232 average on balls in play. Gallen had struck out between 25-29% of opponents in each of his first five-plus MLB seasons. The swing-and-miss drop wasn\u2019t quite so extreme on a per-pitch basis, but last year\u2019s 9.5% swinging strike rate was the second-lowest mark of his career.<\/p>\n

There weren\u2019t any dramatic changes to Gallen\u2019s raw stuff. His fastball averaged 93.5 mph, right in line with his career mark. That\u2019s essentially league average for a right-handed starting pitcher. Opponents have had increasing success against Gallen\u2019s heater over the past couple seasons. He managed decent results on his knuckle-curve and changeup, his top two secondary offerings. He sporadically mixed a cutter, slider and sinker \u2014 all of which were hit hard.<\/p>\n

It remains to be seen if they\u2019ll make any changes to his arsenal going into 2026. Gallen began to scale back his four-seam fastball usage in the final few months last season, largely in favor of more changeups. In any case, the team probably feels he deserved a little better than a near-5.00 ERA would suggest. Statcast\u2019s \u201cexpected\u201d ERA, which is based on his strikeout\/walk profile and the batted balls he allows, landed at 4.28. His 4.24 SIERA was in a similar range. A positive regression toward those metrics would make him a league average starter.<\/p>\n

This is an ideal outcome for the Diamondbacks. They were willing to pay an upfront $22.025MM salary to retain Gallen in November. His decision to decline the QO may very well have opened the payroll room to bring Kelly back on a two-year, $40MM free agent deal. Team personnel maintained throughout the offseason that they\u2019d like to retain Gallen if they could make it work financially.<\/p>\n

Owner Ken Kendrick raved about Gallen as far back as September. \u201cHe\u2019s a special young man who spent nearly seven years as a D-back. He definitely had an up-and-down season \u2014 performed better in the later part of the year, certainly, than earlier in the year. \u2026 He\u2019s loved being a Diamondback,\u201d Kendrick said at the time. \u201cI don\u2019t want to say it\u2019s out of the touch of reality that we\u2019d work out an arrangement to bring him back. He\u2019s been a great D-back. Last I recall, he was the guy who pitched seven or eight innings of no-hit ball in a World Series game for the Arizona Diamondbacks. \u2026 He\u2019s the guy you want to root for.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just this week, manager Torey Lovullo said the clubhouse would \u201cwould welcome him with open arms, certainly\u201d if they could get a deal done. Now that it has come to pass, he\u2019ll slot alongside Kelly,\u00a0Ryne Nelson<\/a>,\u00a0Eduardo Rodriguez<\/a> and\u00a0Brandon Pfaadt<\/a> in the projected rotation. That could push free agent pickup\u00a0Michael Soroka<\/a> into a long relief role unless they decide to run a six-man rotation. They\u2019re without a true ace until\u00a0Corbin Burnes<\/a> makes it back from Tommy John surgery; he\u2019s aiming for some time around the All-Star Break. There\u2019s far more stability than they had at the beginning of the winter, allowing them to take their time in deciding when to bring up prospects like\u00a0Mitch Bratt<\/a> and\u00a0Kohl Drake<\/a>, both of whom they acquired from Texas in the Kelly trade.<\/p>\n

Penciling in a $22.025MM salary for Gallen would bring Arizona\u2019s payroll projection to roughly $194MM, as calculated by RosterResource<\/a>. That\u2019d technically be right in line with last year\u2019s $195MM season-opening mark, which Kendrick said at the beginning of the winter that the team wouldn\u2019t match. However, they\u2019re reportedly only on the hook for around $8MM in salary payments this year. The rest won\u2019t be paid for five years, so the D-Backs didn\u2019t need to dramatically stretch the budget after waiting out the offseason.<\/p>\n

The Diamondbacks don\u2019t forfeit any of their existing draft choices to re-sign their own qualified free agent. Any other team would have punted at least one draft choice and potentially international signing bonus pool space to sign him. They are indirectly losing a pick by forfeiting the right to compensation. That selection would have come after the first round in 2026 if Gallen had signed elsewhere for at least $50MM.<\/p>\n

That seemed a distinct possibility early in the offseason but almost certainly wasn\u2019t happening in the middle of February. It\u2019s more likely that they\u2019re passing on a compensation pick that would have landed 73rd or 74th overall in this year\u2019s draft. That\u2019s not a huge cost compared to bringing back a potential mid-rotation starter on a favorable deal.<\/p>\n

Although the team must be happy with the outcome, it\u2019s undoubtedly not what Gallen envisioned for his first trip to free agency. Jon Heyman of The New York Post<\/a> suggests that Gallen declined multi-year offers from other teams because he preferred to remain with the Diamondbacks. That doesn\u2019t mean that the market didn\u2019t materialize as hoped. MLBTR predicted a four-year, $80MM deal at the beginning of the offseason. It seems clear in retrospect that teams weren\u2019t willing to go to those lengths given Gallen\u2019s disappointing platform year.<\/p>\n

Even if staying in Arizona was his first choice all along, he\u2019s coming out quite a bit worse than if he\u2019d accepted the qualifying offer. He\u2019ll receive the same amount of money in the long run, but the true value of the deferred money is worth less than if he\u2019d collected it all in 2026. John Gambadoro of Arizona Sports<\/a> reports that the net present value will land in the $12-13MM range for competitive balance tax purposes. That probably doesn\u2019t mean much for the team \u2014 they would\u2019ve been more than $20MM away from the CBT threshold in either case \u2014 but illustrates that there\u2019s a significant gap between the QO and this contract.<\/p>\n

Gallen did at least agree to terms within a couple days of camps opening. Assuming he takes his physical at some point during the weekend, he\u2019ll report to the team by the beginning of the week and should have plenty of time to be ready for Opening Day. One can imagine he probably didn\u2019t want to wait until close to Opening Day and risk following a similar path as former teammate\u00a0Jordan Montgomery<\/a> did in 2024. Montgomery was very critical of how Boras had managed negotiations and switched agencies within two weeks of signing with the D-Backs. The lefty pitched poorly in \u201924, then underwent Tommy John surgery last spring. He signed a $1.25MM deal with Texas this week and wound up making $48.75MM over three seasons from 2024-26.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s certainly a world where things work out well for Gallen in the long run. He\u2019ll return to the open market at age 31 without being weighed down by draft compensation. A player can only receive the qualifying offer once in his career. A four- or five-year deal could be on the table if he rebounds to the form he showed in 2022-24: a 3.20 ERA and 26% strikeout rate over 93 starts.\u00a0Blake Snell<\/a>,\u00a0Cody Bellinger<\/a>,\u00a0Pete Alonso<\/a> and\u00a0Matt Chapman<\/a> are all Boras clients who found disappointing markets in one offseason and went on to much more lucrative contracts after bounce back performances.<\/p>\n

Time will tell if Gallen can follow the same path. His immediate focus will be on trying to get Arizona to a playoff berth in an annually difficult NL West. Gallen was the last unsigned qualified free agent and arguably the last potential impact player available.\u00a0Lucas Giolito<\/a>,\u00a0Max Scherzer<\/a>,\u00a0Zack Littell<\/a> and Griffin Canning<\/a> headline a dwindling free agent class.<\/p>\n

More to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"8:23pm: It\u2019s a $22.025MM guarantee, reports Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic. That matches the price of the qualifying…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":440362,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,82,10622],"class_list":{"0":"post-473717","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-zac-gallen"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=473717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473717\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/440362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}