Arizona Diamondbacks Skipper Torey Lovullo finally made his opening-day starting pitcher decision, and the obvious choice was the now three-time opening-day starter for the team, Zac Gallen. Gallen was the starter for the Spring Training game today against the Athletics when the news came down before the outing, and Torey spoke about why it was Zac and not the newly acquired Corbin Burns.
“Zac Gallen will be our Opening Day starter. I spent a lot of time on it and just felt like reasons that I can probably give you, reasons that I won’t want to give you. I just had a long, hard conversation with the people inside of my circle and some outside my circle as well,” said Torey Lovullo, D-backs manager.
Zac has had some slow starts to the season the last few years, but with the push from Corbin Burns and Torey’s confidence in him, he will look to start strong and get the season off to a good start. Gallen has been the team ace for 2020. In his time, he has been in the Cy Young voting in 2022 and also helped lead his team to a World Series berth, an All-Star, and the team’s best starter while piling up stats that would make this decision today a no-brainer.
Gallen will look to return to his dominant self after a down season last year that was not up to his standard. Most of the team’s key players had injuries, including Zac, which held him out a hand of games. He had to ramp himself back up, and the team fell out of an opportunity to compete for another chance at a World title.
In the meantime, Zac and Spring Training are going pretty steady as the team beat up the Athletics today 11-3, and Gallen finished in 4,1 innings pitched and recorded 2 strikeouts, gave up 5 hits and 1 earned run, and is now 2-0 in the Cactus league series.
Today’s lineup featured only a few starters, but the bats were on fire, with 17 hits, led by Garrett Hampson’s 3 of 4 batting on the afternoon.
Spring Training has one more week, and the real deal starts on Thursday the 27th, against the Chicago Cubs at Chase Field. We will see if the Dbacks can put this good roster on paper to match on the field and get off to a blistering start of the 2025 regular season as one of the best teams.
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