Gallen doesn't miss a beat, goes 6 scoreless in return

CINCINNATI -- Zac Gallen was confident that his right hamstring was no longer an issue, that all the extra rest he had gotten since his last start on April 26 had taken care of the tightness that forced him to leave the game in the sixth inning.

Yet, as with any athlete who has experienced something like that there is always going to be at least the smallest amount of doubt that all might not be right.

“There's always that subconscious kind of hesitancy of, you know, is it going to happen again?” Gallen said.

But once he completed his pregame bullpen session and took the mound at Great American Ball Park, those doubts were washed away, and the right-hander turned in a gem as the D-backs cruised to a 6-2 win over the Reds on Tuesday night.

Gallen allowed just one hit and struck out six over six shutout innings -- and at 79 pitches, he probably could have gone at least another inning, but with the D-backs up 6-0 at the time, manager Torey Lovullo elected to go to the bullpen.

After watching injuries not only take their toll on their own roster, but of a lot of teams around the league, Lovullo was not going to take any chances with his ace.

That abundance of caution and no lingering pain is why Lovullo elected to have Gallen get plenty of extra rest between starts.

After he walked off the mound in Seattle that night, Gallen felt like he could make his next start five days later, and that was the way it was scheduled to go. But when last Tuesday night’s game against the Dodgers was delayed nearly two hours by a swarm of bees and the D-backs pushed Jordan Montgomery’s start to Wednesday -- which would have been Gallen’s day -- Lovullo decided he was going to give him even more time.

It wasn’t a decision Gallen was necessarily thrilled with, but rather one he accepted.

“He's very cerebral,” Lovullo said. “He wants to know why a lot and he pushed back and he asked good questions about 'Why is that? Why are you thinking that?' But at the end of every conversation, he understands where I'm coming from. I think he respects it.”

A fierce competitor, Gallen learned a lot from pitching so deep into the postseason in 2023 and the kind of toll that takes.

It’s why he agreed with Lovullo’s idea to bring him along a little slower during Spring Training and why he understands that there will be times early in the season when his manager decides to cut his outings an inning short if the D-backs have a big lead.

Those innings and pitches, Lovullo told him, can be used later in the season and in the postseason when they matter even more.

“I felt really good, honestly,” Gallen said of when he was originally supposed to make his start last week. “But the older I get, the more mature I get, I can kind of take a step back and look at the bigger picture and go, ‘OK, yeah, maybe it's smart that we just [give] it the utmost time and get some rest.’”

Gallen got plenty of run support, thanks in large part to outfielder Corbin Carroll, who has shown signs recently of snapping out of the funk he’s been in to start the season.

Carroll drove in a run in the third with a groundout, one in the fifth with a single and then delivered the big blow -- a three-run homer in the seventh.

In addition to doing the most damage, the homer showed more than anything that Carroll’s swing is in a good spot. It came in a left-on-left matchup and it went a Statcast-projected 390 feet to the opposite field. For a hitter to hit a ball that far the opposite way, he has to have good swing mechanics.