The Athletic has live coverage of Phillies vs. Diamondbacks in Game 3 of the NLCS.
PHILADELPHIA — For three nights last autumn, Stacey Gallen stood among the teeming throngs at Citizens Bank Park, marveling at the scene as the World Series returned to her hometown. Gallen, a South Philadelphia native and a South Jersey resident, was almost certainly the only attendee who sported a piece of Arizona Diamondbacks gear at each game. It was a tribute to her son, Zac, who helped her score the tickets.
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“This is crazy here,” Stacey recalled telling Zac. “I hope you get to experience this someday.”
The prospect might have sounded far-fetched last year when Gallen was the ace of a fourth-place team. But it has become reality in 2023 after the 84-win Arizona Diamondbacks stormed past the Milwaukee Brewers and the Los Angeles Dodgers in the first two rounds of the postseason. Gallen will take the baseball for Arizona on Monday in Game 1 of the National League Championship Series against the Philadelphia Phillies. It will be a road game within shouting distance of his home: Gallen grew up in Gibbsboro, N.J., a Camden County borough only 20 minutes away from this ballpark.
The storyline is imperfect. As a child, Gallen rooted for the St. Louis Cardinals. His dreams centered around Busch Stadium, not this madhouse near the banks of the Delaware River. “The kid in me — I wanted to pitch for the Cardinals in the playoffs,” Gallen said. “But I wanted to pitch for anyone in the playoffs, and be on that stage.”
In his first postseason, Gallen has acquitted himself well. He limited the Brewers to two runs in Game 2 of the Wild Card Series and did the same in Game 2 of the next round at Dodger Stadium. The starting duo of Gallen and Merrill Kelly is crucial to Arizona’s chances of advancing. Gallen will get the first crack at subduing a Phillies lineup that blitzed the 104-win Braves in the National League Division Series.
“As far as what he means to this team, it’s hard to put into words,” first baseman Christian Walker said. “We count on him a lot. We rely on him. And I think he likes that. He wants that role.”
This is an awesome view of what makes Zac Gallen special pic.twitter.com/tZ4kb5yoAj
— Jay Feely (@jayfeely) October 10, 2023
Gallen, a 28-year-old right-hander, has been open about his designs on the sport’s apex. He has studied the careers of future Hall of Famers like Clayton Kershaw, Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander. He has not yet entered that echelon but quietly has become one of the baseball’s best pitchers. Gallen ranks eighth in ERA (3.34), eighth in fielding-independent ERA (3.42) and 10th in strikeout rate (9.62 per nine innings) among pitchers who have thrown at least 500 innings since 2021.
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On his phone, Gallen keeps a screengrab of last year’s National League Cy Young Award voting. He finished fifth, four spots behind the winner, Sandy Alcántara, who was traded from St. Louis to Miami along with Gallen in exchange for outfielder Marcell Ozuna after the 2017 season. Gallen uses the picture as motivation: He thinks about the writers who left him off the ballot.
Gallen figures to get more votes in 2023. He started in his first All-Star Game this summer. He finished second in victories (17) and third in FanGraphs’s version of wins above replacement (5.2) among National League pitchers. He was one of five pitchers to surpass 200 innings this season; only San Francisco starter Logan Webb logged more innings than Gallen, who threw a career-best 210. He did not appear fazed by the stage in either of his two postseason outings.
“The one thing that I know I can say about Zac Gallen is that he is as good as anybody I’ve been around at slowing down the moment and not being too overexcited,” Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo said.
Lovullo suggested that quality will aid Gallen when he starts on Monday. The atmosphere at Citizens Bank Park has been raucous this October. “There’s a certain buzz in the air,” Walker said. The expected ambiance was significant enough that Arizona piped in artificial crowd noise during a workout at Chase Field over the weekend. And Gallen knows not to expect a hero’s welcome. When it looked like the Diamondbacks might draw the Phillies in the wild-card round, he heard some chatter from his mother: Some family friends weren’t sure who to root for. He smirked when asked why they couldn’t root for him.
“Do you know any Philly fans?” Gallen said.
Some pals suggested an ideal scenario: “Everyone’s like, ‘We’re hoping for a shutout through seven (innings), and for you to lose, 1-0,’” Gallen said.
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The joking texts ceased as Gallen prepared for this series. He indicated he has not strayed far from the team hotel. His friends understand the stakes. Even so, with all the ticket requests, he said, “I’m playing for free here.”
Despite his disinterest in the Phillies as a child, Gallen remains a fan of the Eagles and the Sixers. His press conference on Sunday began minutes after the Eagles kicked off.
“I’ll be tuning in as soon as I get off the podium here to see what’s going on,” Gallen said. His affection for the city endures. After he left home for the University of North Carolina, he commemorated returns with a ritual. “The first thing I would get when I came into town was a cheesesteak,” Gallen said. “My mom picks me up at the airport, we’re going right to Pat’s,” the Passyunk Avenue landmark. (Like many expats, he harbors concerns about the quality control at another local institution. “I’m still going to live and die with Wawa,” Gallen said. “I’ll take Wawa over Sheetz any day. But I don’t stand on it as tall as I did.”)
Gallen said he was planning on buying a home in Phoenix. His mother insisted she was handling it as well as she could. “I guess it’ll figure itself out,” Stacey said. “You don’t want me to cry during this interview.”
Stacey and her husband, Jim, were part of a merry group of Diamondbacks fans at Dodger Stadium last week. Gallen exited with one out in the sixth inning of Game 2 after permitting a pair of singles. “I was not happy that they took him out in L.A. with men on base,” Stacey said. For the record, neither was pitching coach Brent Strom, who debated the move with Lovullo. “You hate to take your best guy out,” Strom said. “But that’s why Torey makes the big bucks, and I don’t make much.”
Stacey decided to stay out west as the series shifted to Phoenix. After the Diamondbacks finished off the Dodgers, the players jogged through the outfield and splashed around in the pool beyond the right-field fence. Gallen toweled off after a while so he could drive his mother to the airport to catch her red-eye flight home. Stacey took a nap and then went to her job as an office manager for a law firm.
She will have a far shorter commute to her son’s next start.
“I’m very excited to — I’m going to get emotional — to have my kid have this experience,” Stacey said. “Who would have thought?”
(Top photo of Diamondbacks ace Zac Gallen pitching in Philadelphia earlier this season: Rich Graessle / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
