The Diamondbacks are re-signing Zac Gallen on a one-year contract, pending a physical contract. Boras Corporation’s client technically receives a $22.025MM guarantee that matches the value of the qualifying offer it rejected in November. However, the reported $14MM will be amortized in five installments of $2.8MM paid between 2031-35. That means the D-Backs will pay a little more than $8MM, one-third of the contract, this year. They will need to open up 40-man roster spots for Gallen as well Paul Sewald once those deals become official there is no shortage of people to go on the 60 day injured list.
Gallen is coming off a down year that clearly reduced his appeal on the open market. He entered this season as a strong candidate to command over $100MM once he hits free agency. Gallen stayed healthy and pitched all 33, but had career-worst stats. He turned in a personal 4.83 earned run average with a career-worst 21.5% strikeout rate.
The season got off to a particularly rough start, as Gallen allowed at least five earned runs in nine innings over the first four months. He carried a 5.40 ERA into the All-Star Break and had a 5.60 mark in 127 innings at the trade deadline. The D-Backs were aggressive salesmen, on the go Josh Naylor, Eugenio Suárez, Merrill Kelly again Shelby Miller. They didn’t get an offer they liked from Gallen in addition to the draft pick they could have collected if he signed elsewhere after turning down a qualifying offer.
Arizona was reportedly worried about overworking young pitchers down the stretch, so they took advantage of holding Gallen to innings by himself. He’s gotten better after the deadline, pitching quality starts in eight of his last 11 outings. The 30-year-old has turned in a 3.32 ERA over his last 65 innings. The Diamondbacks went 7-4 in those games, which is part of the reason they were able to hang on to the Wild Card picture heading into the final weekend despite the July selloff.
While it’s been an encouraging few months, it hasn’t been a great return to form. Gallen only struck out 20% of opponents in that span. He’s helped a lot with a .232 average on balls in play. Gallen struck out between 25-29% of opponents in his first five-plus home MLB season. The swing-and-miss decline wasn’t that bad per se, but last year’s 9.5% swing rate was the second-lowest mark of his career.
There are no major changes in Gallen’s raw materials. His fastball averaged 93.5 mph, matching his career mark. That’s about league average for a starting right fielder. Opponents have had increasing success against Gallen’s heater over the past few seasons. He holds respectable results in the knuckle-curve and changeup, his second-highest contributions. He used to put together a cutter, a slide and a sink – all of which were hard hit.
It remains to be seen whether they will make any changes to his arsenal in 2026. Gallen began cutting back on his use of four-seam fastballs in the final few months of last season, mostly in favor of more changeups. Either way, the team feels they deserve better than an ERA near 5.00 would suggest. Statcast’s “expected” ERA, based on his strikeout/walk profile and the bats he allows, comes in at 4.28. His 4.24 SIERA was in the same range. A good drop in those metrics would make him a league-average starter.
This is a good result for the Diamondbacks. They were willing to pay $22.025MM in upfront salary to keep Gallen in November. His decision to decline the QO may have opened up cap room to bring Kelly back to a two-year, $40MM free agent deal. The team’s staff has insisted throughout the offseason that they would like to keep Gallen if they can’t make it work financially.
Owner Ken Kendrick spoke ill of Gallen back in September. “He’s a special guy who’s spent almost seven years as a D-Back. He’s definitely had an up season — he’s done better at the end of the year, really, than at the beginning of the year. … He loves being a Diamondback,” Kendrick said at the time. “I don’t want to say it was out of the question that we were going to make a plan to bring him back. He’s been a great D-Back. Last I remember, he was the guy who pitched seven or eight no-hit innings in the World Series game for the Arizona Diamondbacks. … He’s a guy you want to get rid of.”
Just this week, manager Torey Lovullo said the clubhouse would “welcome him with open arms, absolutely” if they could make a deal. Now that it’s done, he’ll step in alongside Kelly, Ryne Nelson, Eduardo Rodriguez again Brandon Pfaadt in the target rotation. That could push free agent pickups Michael Soroka in a long relief role unless they decide to run a six-man rotation. They don’t have a true ace until Corbin Burns makes it back from Tommy John surgery; heading into the All-Star Break some time. There is much more stability than they had at the beginning of the winter, which allows them to take their time in deciding when to bring out prospects like Mitch Bratt again Kohl Drakeboth of whom found themselves in Texas in the Kelly trade.
Penciling in Gallen’s $22.025MM salary would bring Arizona’s projected salary to $194MM, as calculated by RosterResource. That would be right on par with last year’s $195MM season-opening mark, which Kendrick said earlier this winter the team wouldn’t match. However, they are reportedly on the hook for around $8MM in salary cap space this year, so the D-Backs didn’t need to dramatically stretch the budget after waiting the offseason.
The Diamondbacks do not forfeit any of their existing draft picks to re-sign their eligible free agent. Any other team would have had at least one draft pick and some extra international signing bonus space to sign him. Indirectly they lose choice by taking away the right to compensation.
That pick would have come after the first round in 2026 if Gallen had signed elsewhere for $50MM. That seemed like a possibility at the beginning of the season but was almost impossible by mid-February. They’re more likely to pass on a compensatory option that would have gone 73rd or 74th overall, which they get if he went for less than $50MM. That’s not a huge cost compared to bringing back a potential starter for the rotation in the middle of a favorable deal.
While the team must be happy with the result, there’s no doubt that it’s not what Gallen had in mind for his first trip to free agency. Jon Heyman of The New York Post suggests he turned down multi-year offers from other teams because he preferred to stay with the Diamondbacks. That is not to say that the market did not perform as expected. MLBTR projected a four-year, $80MM deal at the start of the offseason. It seems clear in retrospect that teams weren’t willing to go that number given Gallen’s disappointing field year.
Even if staying in Arizona was his first choice all along, he’ll come out worse than if he accepted a qualified offer. You will receive the same amount of money later, but the actual amount of the deferred money is worth less than if you had collected it all in 2026. John Gambadoro of Arizona Sports reports that the current total would be in the $12-13MM range for competitive balance tax purposes. That probably doesn’t mean much for the team – they would have been $20MM away from the CBT limit in any case – but it does show that there is a significant gap between the QO and this contract.
Gallen agreed to at least some terms within days of the camps opening. Assuming he gets his physical at some point during the weekend, he will report to the team at the start of full team workouts and should have plenty of time to get ready for Opening Day. One would think he didn’t want to wait until the regular season, like his former teammate Jordan Montgomery done in 2024. Montgomery was critical of the way Boras handled negotiations and changed agencies within two weeks of signing with the D-Backs. Lefty didn’t sleep well in ’24, then had Tommy John surgery the previous spring. He signed a $1.25MM deal with Texas this week and makes $48.75MM over three seasons from 2024-26.
There is certainly a world where things go well for Gallen in the long run. He’ll be back on the open market at age 31 without the burden of draft compensation. A player can only receive a qualifying contribution once in their career. A four- or five-year deal could be on the table if he returns to the form he showed in 2022-24: a 3.20 ERA and a 26% strikeout rate over 93 starts. Blake Snell, Cody Bellinger, Pete Alonso again Matt Chapman all of Boras’ clients experienced disappointing sales in one season and moved on to more lucrative contracts after a repeat performance.
Time will tell if Gallen can follow the same path. He is focused on trying to get Arizona to the playoffs in the tough NL West every year. Gallen was the last unsigned free agent and arguably the last power player available. Lucas Giolito, Max Scherzer, Zack Littell again Griffin Canning the subject of a declining free agent class.
Steve Gilbert of MLB.com first reported that the D-Backs were closing in on a deal with Gallen. Nick Piecoro of the Arizona Republic reported it was a one-year deal. Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic reported that it’s a $22.025MM guarantee with about $14MM worth of deferrals. John Gambadoro of Arizona Sports added details on the rescheduling payments.
Photo courtesy of Rick Scuteri, Imagn Images.
