Sports
Zach Gallen free agency: Diamondbacks bring back ace on one-year deal, per report
Zac Gallen is heading back to the desert. Gallen and the Arizona Diamondbacks are closing in on a one-year contract worth $22.025 million, according to a report from The Athletic. About $14 million would be deferred. The deal matches the $22.025 million qualifying offer Gallen rejected in November. The team has not yet announced the signing, which is pending a physical.
Gallen, 30, is coming off a 2025 season in which he didn’t live up to his established standards, hence settling for a one-year contract despite finishing in the top 10 of the National League Cy Young voting three times in his career.
For his career, Gallen has pitched to a 119 ERA+ and an FIP of 3.65 across parts of seven MLB seasons. Over that span he’s compiled a WAR of 20.7, and he’s topped 30 starts and 180 innings in three of the last four seasons. Gallen spent the last six seasons and change with the D-backs, who acquired him from the Miami Marlins in July 2019 in exchange for Jazz Chisholm Jr.
Earlier in the offseason, CBS Sports ranked Gallen as the No. 18 available free agent in the class of 2025-26. Here’s part of R.J. Anderson’s write-up:
“Gallen salvaged what he could with a good 11-start closing stretch, but an otherwise miserable walk year makes him feel like a strong candidate to accept the qualifying offer (if one is tendered) and try again in 2026. Otherwise? He’s a candidate to sign a one-year deal elsewhere and modify his arsenal in an attempt to push back against a trend that has seen his performance slip in each of the past two years.”
Before Gallen’s return, FanGraphs estimated Arizona’s 2026 payroll at $173 million. That is just south of the franchise record ($177 million in 2024), so Gallen will push the club well into uncharted payroll territory. The D-backs will neither gain nor forfeit draft picks to re-sign their own qualified free agent.
Arizona brought Merrill Kelly back earlier this offseason, and now they’ve reunited with Gallen. Those two will join lefty Eduardo Rodriguez and righties Ryne Nelson and Brandon Pfaadt in the rotation. Corbin Burnes, last offseason’s big free-agent splash, is expected to return from Tommy John surgery at midseason.
The D-backs went 80-82 last season and missed the postseason by three games. They sold at the trade deadline, most notably sending Kelly to the Texas Rangers and Eugenio Suárez to the Seattle Mariners, though they kept Gallen.
Gallen was originally drafted by the St. Louis Cardinals. He went to the Marlins with Sandy Alcantara as part of a December 2017 deal that sent Marcell Ozuna to St. Louis.