Gallen Focused More On Repeatability Over Movement With His Pitches

After a scoreless start, Diamondbacks ace Zac Gallen spoke to the media about what he's looking for on the mound with his pitches.

Zac Gallen fired six shutout innings in the Diamondbacks' win over the Cardinals Sunday afternoon. After the game, he spoke to reporters about his curveball, which accounted for four of his seven strikeouts. Gallen is focused more on the feel and repeatability of the pitch, as opposed to the Statcast and pitch modeling data.

"It's more about the feel, how it comes out of my hand, just the repeatability of it," said Gallen. "I feel like the movement and all that stuff is whatever. For me, if I have movement that's minimal but I can repeat it day in and day out, that's when I feel like I'm at my best."

For Gallen, the movement on his pitches serves as a guideline, and he knows what it needs to be for his arsenal to be effective. Going out there and competing on the mound, he needs to have confidence in the feel of his pitches. One such example came in the 4th inning of Sunday afternoon's game. After a double and a weak ground ball put a runner at third with one out, Gallen faced young catcher Iván Herrera. He threw four curveballs in that at-bat, with the final two resulting in whiffs, to pick up a huge strikeout in a scoreless game at the time.

Gallen had never faced Herrera before in his career, so he wasn't necessarily familiar with the tendencies of the opposing hitter. However, he followed along with Tucker Barnhart's call for the pitch to put the hitter away.

"I think he called the curveball, and I felt pretty good about it. I felt like I had a solid feel for it in that inning, so I felt pretty confident just throwing it."

Gallen ultimately escaped that jam as he got Brandon Crawford to pop out to second for the final, and the Cardinals never truly threatened again for the rest of the game. He'd earn his third win of the season when his teammates scored five runs in the 5th inning.