Gallen leaves mark on Fenway as D-backs win 5th straight

BOSTON -- Fenway Park is a bucket list place for baseball fans to visit. For players, it's a bucket list place to actually play, given the tremendous history and the legends who have played there before.

D-backs right-hander Zac Gallen had visited Fenway Park when he was in college at the University of North Carolina, and he even took a tour of it with his mother when he was younger.

Saturday was the first time he actually got to take the mound at the historic ballpark, and he made it a memorable day, as he struck out nine and tossed six scoreless innings in Arizona's 4-1 win over the Red Sox.

"It's fun to think about being on the mound given the guys that have played here over the last 100 years," Gallen said.

The win was the fifth in a row for the D-backs. It was Arizona's second straight win in as many days against Boston, and the D-backs have now won 11 of their last 12 series to maintain their hold on the top Wild Card spot in the National League.

Gallen has done his best to take it all in from a player's perspective. Friday, he went inside the Green Monster in left field -- and as countless players over the years have done -- left his mark there by signing his name on one of the walls.

"It's up there," Gallen said with a smile. "I didn't write it too big. It's big, but it's not that big. There was not a lot of space to go around out there, but I wrote it pretty thick, so we'll see, hopefully it lasts a while. It's cool just to kind of see the famous names [who] have been out there. I spent probably a good 10 minutes in there just kind of looking around. It was a lot of fun."

Facing Gallen, however, was not a lot of fun for the Red Sox, as he held them to just two hits and four walks, carrying a no-hitter through 4 1/3 innings.

Gallen has been working on his curveball recently, trying to get it to go slightly less vertical and a little more horizontal in its movement.

He seemed to have figured it out on Saturday, as Boston first baseman Triston Casas found out after striking out three times against Gallen.

"He was attacking the zone with multiple different pitches," Casas said. "That curveball was on. The metrics were up. And especially with two strikes, he was throwing a curveball that was starting as a ball, coming through the zone as a strike, and then ending as a ball. It's tough to make a decision on which ones to swing at, especially with two strikes, especially when he's getting ahead with strike one, especially when he's got runners on base. You don't want to roll into a double play and have inning-killers. That’s why he's one of the best in the game. He was a handful today, for sure."

It has been a challenging month of August for Gallen as he has continued to search for the elusive feel he wants to have for the ball coming out of his hand. Last time out against the Rays, he allowed four runs on nine hits in five innings and was frustrated by the performance.

Though he did allow just one run over 4 1/3 innings against the Phillies in his start before that, Gallen had gotten roughed up a bit by the Guardians at the beginning of the month, giving up five runs in seven innings.

So with those three starts having constituted his August, a start like this gave him positive feedback on the work that he had been putting in.

In all, it was a trip to Fenway that he has certainly made the most of.