Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher Zac Gallen was finally mentioned in the same breath as franchise icon Randy Johnson this week — though not for the reason Gallen, Johnson and all birds everywhere would prefer.
Gallen went viral for a few minutes on Wednesday, when he accidentally struck and killed a bird with a curveball while throwing in the outfield prior to the Diamondbacks’ game against the Oakland Athletics.
The incident conjured up immediate memories of the most famous pitcher vs. bird episode in human history — the 2001 pitch Johnson threw that struck and killed a bird during the Diamondbacks’ spring training game against the San Francisco Giants.
(In another weird Arizona twist: The batter for the Giants was Calvin Murray, who is the uncle of Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray, who was a first-round pick of the Athletics in 2018 before deciding to focus on football.)
Tonight in Pittsburgh, Gallen will look to offer up the latest reminder that he was worthy of being mentioned in the same sentence as Johnson long before a bird unfortunately crossed his curveball’s path.
When Gallen steps on the mound at PNC Park for the Diamondbacks for the opener of a three-game series against the Pittsburgh Pirates, he’ll do so as the favorite to win the National League Cy Young Award.
Gallen stands atop the DraftKings board at +175, just ahead of budding Atlanta Braves ace Spencer Strider (+240). They are the only two pitches with odds shorter than +1000.
Gallen, who entered the season with odds of +1100 to win the Cy Young, leads the NL with an 0.86 WHIP and a strikeout-to-walk ratio of 8.75 and shares the league lead in wins (six) with Clayton Kershaw and Justin Steele. He also ranks among the top three in strikeouts (second with 70), innings pitched (second with 57 1/3), ERA (third at 2.35) and strikeouts per nine innings (third at 10.99).
Strider leads the NL in strikeouts (86) and strikeouts per nine innings (14.98) but is just outside the top 10 in ERA (2.96) and has thrown 51 2/3 innings after a five-inning stint against the Texas Rangers on Wednesday.
Major League Baseball doesn’t measure player’s “Q” ratings, but Strider probably leads Gallen there. With an old-time mustache, a high-90s fastball and a unique backstory — Strider, a fourth-round pick of the Braves in 2020, is a vegetarian who once said the one person he’d most like to have dinner with is two-time Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, which, let’s just say, is a 1-2 combination not offered by many of his peers — Strider offers plenty of intrigue and recognizability.
Gallen has more of an old-fashioned versatile arsenal. His four-seam fastball has averaged around 93 mph this season but he mixes it with a cutter, a changeup, a curveball and a slider.
And with long hair jutting out of his cap and adorned in goggles on the mound, Gallen looks more like a college professor who could easily blend in with his students than someone who could edge out Strider or join Johnson — who stood 6-foot-10, sported a shoulder-length mullet and pitched with a demonic presence — in the small club of Diamondbacks pitchers who won the Cy Young.
Gallen has also spent most of his career toiling in anonymous fashion, often forgotten about by not only observers but his own team.
While Gallen was a third-round pick of the St. Louis Cardinals in 2016, he was traded twice before establishing himself with the Diamondbacks. He was one of the lesser-known players the Cardinals dealt — along with 2022 NL Cy Young Award winner Sandy Alcantara — to the Miami Marlins in exchange for Marcell Ozuna in December 2017.
Gallen opened his big league career by posting a 2.72 ERA in his first seven starts for the Marlins in 2019 but was dealt to Arizona for infielder Jazz Chisholm Jr.
Gallen went 2-3 with a 2.89 ERA in eight starts for the Diamondbacks down the stretch in 2019 before finishing ninth in the Cy Young balloting in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, when he was 3-2 with a 2.75 ERA and 82 strikeouts over 72 innings.
He fell off most radars in 2021, when Gallen suffered three injuries — including a partial tear of the UCL in his right elbow — and went 4-10 with a 4.30 ERA in 23 starts. But he surged back into Cy Young contention last season, when Gallen finished fifth in the balloting by going 12-4 with a 2.54 ERA and an NL-best 0.91 WHIP in a campaign highlighted by a 44 1/3-inning scoreless streak in August and September.
Gallen began this season by allowing nine earned runs in his first 10 2/3 innings, but he threw 27 scoreless innings over his next four starts, a span in which he struck out 41 and walked just one. The Diamondbacks, who are the surprise leaders in the NL wild card race, are 7-2 when Gallen starts and 18-17 when he doesn’t.
With 1.7 in WAR, per Baseball-Reference, a quarter of the way through the season, Gallen has a chance at authoring the best season by a Diamondbacks pitcher not named Johnson or Curt Schilling. Brandon Webb finished with 7.0 WAR in 2006, when he became the second and most recent Arizona pitcher to win the Cy Young.
The nip-and-tuck nature of the race with Strider doesn’t leave Gallen a lot of room for error in his Cy Young charge. And future Hall of Famer Clayton Kershaw (+1100 odds at DraftKings), authoring a throwback season for another Los Angeles Dodgers squad on its way to another 100-win season, lurks as a potential sentimental candidate who could siphon some votes if Gallen and Strider fall off a bit and end up virtually indistinguishable from each other.
But with Gallen thriving, his unfortunate intersection with an ill-fated bird Wednesday also provides a timely reminder that the 2001 NL Cy Young Award winner was…Randy Johnson.
