'League's taken notice' of Gallen in turnaround year

MILWAUKEE -- In theory, the final start of the season for a pitcher is no different from any other over the course of a six-month season. The stats count the same, the conditions are the same.

"No matter if it's the first start, the seventh, the 20th [or the] last one, I'm trying to go out there and do my job," D-backs right-hander Zac Gallen said.

There is one big difference however -- the next start doesn't come until the following April.

"Obviously you want to pitch well because then you got to kind of sit on it for the rest of the offseason," Gallen said.

Gallen's final start Tuesday was a 3-0 loss to the Brewers at American Family Field in which he allowed three runs over five innings.

"I’m at a tough point now: How long am I going to sit on that one for?" Gallen said.

If he's being fair with himself, the answer should be that he lets it go pretty quickly, because no matter how he feels about how it ended, the 2022 season was a rousing success for the 27-year-old, who figures to get his share of top five votes in the NL Cy Young Award balloting.

There is little question who the ace of the Arizona staff is.

"Took strides forward as somebody that we will continue to depend upon to go out there and execute at a high level to help us win baseball games," D-backs manager Torey Lovullo said of Gallen's season. "And I want to keep it as simple as possible. I don't want to put any extra seasoning on what the expectations are. I think Zac is a very simple, hard-working person that's just going to go out there and execute, then I want him to continue doing that, but [the] league's taken notice."

Gallen finished the year with a 2.54 ERA, a 0.91 WHIP and a .186 opponent's batting average to go along with a 12-4 record in 184 innings over 31 starts.

Gallen gained some national notoriety this year when he put together a 44 1/3-inning scoreless streak from Aug. 8-Sept. 11. It set an Arizona franchise record and was the seventh-longest streak in AL/NL history.

"Coming off of last year, going on the IL three or four different times, then being able to be fully healthy this year, technically not really miss a start, making 31 starts in a row and throwing 185 innings, something like that, to me, that’s really been the positive," Gallen said. "It turned out to be a good year."

Gallen leaves 2022 with a far different feeling than he did 2021 -- which was, as he noted, marked by multiple trips to the injured list. Because of the stop-and-start nature of his season, he never seemed to get into a rhythm, and the 4.30 ERA he compiled in 23 starts gave him plenty of motivation last offseason.

"I definitely felt like I had things to prove on a lot of fronts," Gallen said. "The health front, the talent front, you know, all the things of that nature. It’s kind of funny, you have a down year, and soon you’re labeled injury prone, whatever you want to go and get at there. I felt like I had to come in here this year and prove a lot of people wrong. It was kind of a mission this year to make sure that people understand last year was more of a fluke than anything."

Whether people actually doubted Gallen after last year or whether they really said he was injury prone doesn't matter. It was fuel for his fire.

And given his competitive nature and exacting perfectionistic approach he takes to his craft, Gallen will find something this winter that pushes him to work harder and dig deeper into his preparation for 2023.

"This is why you play the game, to have years like this, obviously," Gallen said. "I’ve seen both sides of the fence now and understand that sometimes things happen that are out of your control. But this is the kind of year I expect from myself all the time. Granted, I know that doesn’t happen because some things are out of your control. But I want to go out there and have years [like this]. That’s just what I expect of myself."