Diamondbacks aiming to get Zac Gallen, Christian Walker on track in World Series

ARLINGTON, Texas — In the Diamondbacks’ wildest dreams, the ones where they somehow reached the World Series, two players would have been at the center of the vision.

Zac Gallen would have been their ace, dominating in his two National League Championship Series starts to guide them to baseball’s highest peak. And Christian Walker would have been the slugger in the middle of their lineup, sending baseballs soaring into seats with regularity.

Instead, they were two of the Diamondbacks’ least productive players against the Phillies. Gallen had a 7.36 ERA as Arizona lost both his starts. Walker went 2 for 22 with a lone double. In the Diamondbacks’ four wins, he was hitless.

Gallen’s struggles in particular weighed on him, creating a feeling that he didn’t do enough to help the team. Yet, here the Diamondbacks are, preparing for their first World Series in 22 years. Game 1 against the Texas Rangers is Friday night, and Gallen will get the start.

“I'm looking to try and pull my weight this time around,” Gallen said.

As they showed in the NLCS, the Diamondbacks can win a high-pressure, seven-game series without contributions from two of their best players. But it sure would be helpful to have them playing well.

For Gallen, that begins Friday, when he lines up against Texas' Nathan Eovaldi. The assignment comes amid not just two poor starts in the NLCS, but two months of them. Since Aug. 28, he has a 5.04 ERA in 11 starts. In more than half those starts, he has allowed at least four runs.

“Just lack of execution, really,” Gallen said. “So for me, just trying to execute a little bit better and give us a chance to win.”

Gallen’s lack of command was most obvious in NLCS Game 1, when he left three fastballs in the middle of the strike zone to Kyle Schwarber, Bryce Harper and Nick Castellanos, with all three turning into home runs. In Game 5, he found a groove after a rocky first until he served up a middle-middle curveball to Schwarber, who homered. Two batters later, Harper hit a fastball out.

Part of Gallen’s struggles, pitching coach Brent Strom believes, can be attributed to his workload. Including the playoffs, Gallen has worked 232 1/3 innings, nearly 50 more than his previous career high. But there are also identifiable issues Strom is hoping to correct in order to combat that fatigue.

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“He is such a tinkerer and tries to do some stuff, I'm trying to get him back to simplicity,” Strom said. “… A lot of times, he likes to feel things. He's really a 'feel' kind of pitcher. I try and feel things with my golf swing, too, and it doesn't work too well when I think about that. I usually hit the ball better if I've had a few beers.”

To Strom, simplicity can come both in Gallen’s mechanics and in his game-planning. Gallen, too, highlighted his game-planning, something he treats with notoriously meticulous care.

“(The Phillies) didn't seem to miss mistakes,” Gallen said. “I'm somebody who attacks the strike zone. I think going in they knew that. They got pitches to handle. So with teams like that, teams that are really good, you've got to try to stay out of the middle of the plate and be a step ahead in terms of sequencing.”

The Rangers are a similar story. Their lineup lacks clear holes. They scored the most runs in the American League this year for a reason. And while Gallen did shut them down in a six-inning, one-run, 11-strikeout outing on Aug. 22, they’re a different team now.

“We didn't get a chance to see Evan Carter earlier in the year,” Gallen said. “So that's another fold that they added into the mix. And they're playing hot, too.”

For Walker, the equation is simpler, in part because his success is more recent. In the first two rounds of the playoffs, he hit .294 with a 1.023 OPS.

“I'm not getting a lot of center-cut pitches,” Walker said. “So my choice is to try to hit the fringe stuff or maybe be a little bit more patient and try to wait out the mistake. … It's just, I really wanna help our team win games and I need to understand when the opponents are giving me that opportunity or when they're trying to make the next guy do it.”

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Walker, though, isn’t letting himself get caught up in his own slump. In the regular season, he says, he might know “the fun numbers.” How many home runs he’s hit, how many RBI he has. In the playoffs? “I couldn't tell you what my slash is,” Walker said.

That makes it easier to wash the struggles away.

“We're winning games,” Walker said. “And that's all that matters.”

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Diamondbacks aiming to get Gallen, Walker on track in World Series