No-no? Gallen's stuff had Lovullo planning it
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Around the third or fourth inning of Monday's walk-off win over the Athletics, D-backs manager Torey Lovullo wandered down to the other end of the dugout to confer with the team’s medical staff.
On the mound, Zac Gallen was carving up A’s hitters and looked like he had no-hit-type stuff.
“He was peppering the zone with all sorts of pitches,” Lovullo said. “I start to get very stressed out when somebody has a no-hit alert and the pitch count is climbing, and you have to make a tough decision.”
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Before any game begins, Lovullo usually has a maximum number of pitches that he wants his starting pitcher to throw. But a no-hitter is a different story, and that can allow for the number to be adjusted upwards.
Not wanting to have to make a decision in the emotion of the moment, Lovullo wanted to get ahead of the situation, so he asked the medical staff to start crunching some numbers.
“I did go over to the medical team and said, ‘Can we get on this right now? And let me know what you guys feel comfortable with pitch-count wise,’” Lovullo recalled.
A lot goes into that number -- how many pitches Gallen had thrown in his previous start, how many days of rest he’s had in between, what his workload has been like this season, what kind of treatment, if any, he’s been receiving lately, and on and on.
After a discussion, it was decided that Gallen would be allowed to throw between 115-120 pitches if he had a no-hitter going.
“And 100 percent I would not have exceeded that number,” Lovullo said.
It was all for naught, though, as Austin Allen broke up the no-hit bid with a one-out single to right in the sixth. Gallen wound up throwing 97 pitches over seven innings, allowing one run on three hits and one walk. All told, his ERA stands at 2.40 over five outings and 30 innings in 2020, striking out 36 against eight walks. Since joining the D-backs at the '19 Trade Deadline, those numbers are 2.69 over 13 starts and 73 2/3 innings, striking out 89 against 26 walks.