Diamondbacks Doctors Turn Analytics Into Pitcher Preservation
Zac Gallen, the top young starting pitcher for the Arizona Diamondbacks, has suffered an alarming decrease in fastball velocity during his past three starts. According to stats from Fangraphs, his velocity has fallen from 94.4 miles per hour at Philadelphia on May 24 to 92 mph this past Sunday in Detroit.
Sometimes results like that indicate a lingering arm injury, but in this case, it might just be the vagaries of one of the best pitchers in the National League struggling through a down stretch.
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“If you make 30 starts in a season, you might have your best stuff in 20 of them,” Gallen said during an interview in the D-backs clubhouse at Chase Field on Wednesday. “The other 10 you don’t, and you just have to find a way to work through it.”
Fortunately, the D-backs don’t leave these kinds of situations with their pitchers to chance. Baseball operations and the medical staff, under manager Torey Lovullo and general manager Mike Hazen, have developed an analytical approach to determine whether a pitcher is overworking his arm, which could lead to serious injuries. Their track record since coming to Arizona ahead of the 2017 season is excellent.
A Major League Diamondbacks pitcher hasn’t had to undergo Tommy John ligament replacement surgery since Taijuan Walker in 2018. Walker, now with the Philadelphia Phillies, was obtained in a trade with the Seattle Mariners just after Hazen arrived before the 2017 season. The D-backs have a pitcher evaluation system they follow that includes warmup pitches, the long-toss schedule, and, of course, pitches and innings in games. High-leverage pitches in critical situations are also considered.
The analytics staff inputs that information through a search engine that computes the overall use of the arm and the body, Lovullo said in a recent dugout interview, and tells the staff whether a particular pitcher is fatiguing or injured. The medical staff has major input in that process and can tell the baseball staff to lighten the load on a particular pitcher.
“I know other ballclubs use something like this, but we take it to another level,” he said.
In Gallen’s case, the right-hander allowed a rare three-spot in the fourth inning to the Tigers at Comerica Park and five runs on 10 hits in all in 5 2/3 innings on Sunday. During his previous start against the Atlanta Braves at home, Lovullo allowed Gallen to throw 110 pitches when he gave up three runs on nine hits in six innings.
This, after Gallen had a 28-inning scoreless streak earlier in the season. But the downtick in velocity plus the sudden slump set off the alarm bells. The D-backs ran Gallen’s workload numbers through the matrix and determined he was not hurt.
“The results were great,” Lovullo said. “I don’t think it’s an issue. You get spoiled by Zac. When he gives up five runs you go, ‘What’s going on?’ Nothing. He’s going to be just fine.”
Gallen had a lengthy bullpen session Wednesday in preparation for his next start at home Friday night against Cleveland. Veteran pitching coach Brent Strom said he worked with Gallen on his arm angle and proclaimed that he’s “back to normal.”
The health of D-backs pitchers was a major issue when Hazen and Lovullo arrived from Boston, where Hazen was an assistant GM and Lovullo a bench coach with the Red Sox. Arizona went to the playoffs in their first season in 2017 largely by virtue of a team that heads of previous baseball operations—Kevin Towers, Tony La Russa and Dave Stewart—had left them.
They are in first place right now in the National League West, but haven’t been back to the postseason since.
Arizona’s two previous baseball operations departments didn’t rely much on the analytics curve that was already dominating the Major Leagues. They also left the newcomers with a legacy of pitchers who had previously undergone Tommy John surgery. From 2014 to 2018, nine D-backs pitchers had suffered torn ulnar collateral ligaments in their pitching elbows, including young starters Patrick Corbin and Daniel Hudson, who underwent the surgery twice.
When Hazen joined the team, he had to create an entire analytics department. Part of it was this pitcher evaluation system.
“Rather than just conversing with the pitcher or observing, we have developed all this to get an objective perspective,” Lovullo said. “We build in trust with our players, but we have a formula and a model that we follow.”
In 2017, Shelby Miller and Ruby De La Rosa, both obtained in trades by previous D-backs baseball administrations, underwent Tommy John surgery. When Miller, now with the Los Angeles Dodgers, went down early in the 2017 season, “I cried,” said Lovullo. Walker was hurt almost exactly a year later. As far as major pitchers are concerned, that’s been it.
The Dodgers, in the meantime, have suffered recent serious injuries to starting pitchers Walker Buehler, who last season underwent his second Tommy John surgery, and Dustin May, who’s currently on the injured list with an elbow injury and is hoping to avoid his second surgery. May returned this year after surgery in early 2021; Buehler is still rehabbing.
Gallen, the product of a 2019 deadline trade with the Miami Marlins, is as competitive a pitcher as there is. But at 27, he’s had his own battles with injuries. He understands the protocols and believes that Lovullo and D-backs management care about him as a person, not just as a player.
This is in comparison to Hudson, who was rushed back after only 10 months of rehab. Hudson blew out his elbow again in a minor league start. The prescribed rehab is 12 to 18 months, determined by experienced surgeons who have perfected the surgery and have completed it successfully on hundreds of pitchers.
“Torey had to tell me we’re in this for the long haul,” Gallen said. “We’re not going to let you blow out this year because you feel great. The residual effects of throwing a lot of pitches every game are negative for the most part. He cares. That’s the vibe I get from Torey. They want us to be healthy.”
(This story has been updated in the headline.)
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