The Diamondbacks and Zac Gallen have agreed to a one-year deal to bring the right-hander back to Arizona, sources told MLB.com on Friday.
The agreement is worth $22.025 million, the same value as the qualifying offer Gallen rejected in November, and $14 million is deferred, a source told MLB.com's Mark Feinsand.
The club has not confirmed the deal, which is pending a physical.
Gallen, who has been with the Diamondbacks since being acquired from the Marlins at the Trade Deadline in 2019, has made his home in Arizona and spoke towards the end of the season about wanting to stay with the D-backs.
He declined multi-year offers from other teams to remain with the club, a source told Feinsand.
After his final start of the regular season against the Padres in San Diego, Gallen remained in his uniform long after the game ended, not wanting to take it off.
"It's tough for me to take [it] off," Gallen said. "Kind of lingered on the mound a little bit too when [manager Torey Lovullo] was coming out [to take me out]. Wearing this uniform for seven years now, as much as I spent some time in other organizations, I think of myself as a D-back, really. Spent most of my career here and if it's the last time, it'll be a tough pill to swallow. I know the last two years didn't go the way we wanted them to. This year didn't go the way I envisioned for myself. But every fifth day I put the uniform on, I was honored, I was proud to put the uniform on. I went out there every fifth day and just tried to get these give these guys everything I had. Obviously just this year wasn't enough."
A seven-season veteran, Gallen finished among the top five in National League Cy Young voting in 2022 and 2023. In ‘22, he posted a 2.54 ERA and recorded a 44 1/3-inning scoreless streak that lasted a little more than a month. In ‘23, he set career highs for innings (210) and strikeouts (220) and was the rotation leader for a D-backs team that won the pennant. Although Arizona lost that year’s World Series in five games to the Rangers, Gallen took a no-hitter into the seventh inning of Game 5.
The last two seasons, however, haven’t been quite as successful for the 30-year-old New Jersey native. Gallen was sidelined for about a month in the middle of the 2024 season due to a right hamstring strain and saw his walk rate jump from 5.1% to 8.7%.
Then this past year was Gallen’s most forgettable in many respects. His 4.83 ERA, 4.50 FIP, 21.5% strikeout rate and 9.7% barrel rate were all career worsts. Same goes for the 31 homers he allowed, which tied for the fourth most among qualified starters.
Yet there were reasons to be optimistic about Gallen’s future as he pitched to a 3.32 ERA over his final 11 starts in August and September. He completed six innings in all but two of those games. Mixing his 93 mph four-seamer with his knuckle curve and changeup, Gallen created a lot of soft contact in this closing stretch, highlighted by a 36.8% hard-hit rate and a 6.2% barrel rate. Those numbers were at 46.3% and 11.5%, respectively, entering August.
A third-round pick by the Cardinals in the 2016 Draft, Gallen was involved in two significant trades early in his career. In 2017, he was part of a four-player package that the Cards sent to the Marlins in return for Marcell Ozuna. Sandy Alcantara joined Gallen in that deal. Two years later, Gallen was traded to the D-backs for Jazz Chisholm Jr.