Gallen, D-backs embrace fight in gritty playoff push

PHOENIX -- Sometimes the best lessons can be learned hours before first pitch. As D-backs players and personnel were filtering into the locker room ahead of Sunday's series finale against the Reds, hundreds of fans were busy performing Warrior 2 and Cobra poses in the center-field area of Chase Field during the club’s Yoga on the Field pregame experience.

“Breathe in,” the yogi calmly intoned. “Feel your breath.”

And that’s where the D-backs find themselves -- still breathing. After a flurry of four consecutive wins this week, they have looked up and seen just two teams ahead of them for the third and final National League Wild Card spot, the Reds included. They sit 5 1/2 games back of the Mets with 31 contests to go.

So despite the 6-1 loss, which featured a return to form from Zac Gallen, the reality is this: they’re one month of playing elite baseball away from a return to the postseason.

Of course, it won’t be easy. There’s a slew of daunting matchups on deck, starting Monday when they travel to Milwaukee and take on the club with the best record in MLB. Entering Sunday, the D-backs’ opponents the rest of the way had combined for a .537 winning percentage, the highest in the Majors.

“We're not flying across the country to get our butts kicked,” manager Torey Lovullo said postgame. “We're going across the country to play some baseball, and I'm looking forward to that.”

The rhythms of a baseball season can often repeat themselves. If you feel like you watched Gallen battle the Reds opposite Brady Singer in 2025, it might be because you have -- the two clubs faced off with the same starting pitcher matchup on June 8. That day, after the D-backs wound up on the wrong side of the scoreboard, they sat six games out of a playoff spot with a whole lot of baseball left to play.

Now, there is still time, albeit less of it. The starting lineup looks much different. The bullpen has a new look. But the mission remains the same.

“We play for a gritty state,” Lovullo said. “We're going to be as gritty as we can be. … I want to get on a run. I've been waiting for that eight out of 10 [wins], 10 out of 12 type of run, and we're playing that type of baseball where it's sitting right there. We just got to go out there and finish the job.”

From the get-go, Singer’s up-tempo pace had D-backs batters in a funk. Geraldo Perdomo saw the first two pitches of the game and quickly tried to hit the brakes, calling for time with the count at 1-1; he wound up lacing a triple before coming around to score. Arizona would next collect a hit in the eighth with Singer sitting in the dugout, nine strikeouts to his ledger.

If it felt like D-backs hitters had little time to get ready in the box, that was by design. Singer’s tempo with the bases empty is among the game’s quickest -- he literally has a 0.0% “slow” percentage when it comes to his time between pitches. (Conversely, he ranks in the top 10 with an 82.9% “fast” rate.)

“Once he gets set up, he’s coming,” Lovullo said. “We were intentionally trying to call time out to slow things down. … It was the sweeper that was the equalizer for him. We just couldn't figure out that part of the puzzle.”

Entering the start, Singer’s sweeper was his least-utilized offering (7.2 percent) and had produced just a 27.3 swing-and-miss rate. But D-backs batters swung at it 11 times and whiffed seven.

If Arizona is to pull off a September run that will go down in franchise history, Gallen will have to be at the heart of it. He has gone five consecutive starts with three runs allowed or fewer, posting a 3.10 ERA in that span.

“Any team that kind of [sits] where we were at from a post-Deadline standpoint might just kind of shut it down,” Gallen said. “But I think that's just kind of the culture, kind of the makeup of the guys in here. It's like, ‘Hey, we're gonna play this thing to the end and see what happens.’ I think that's kind of what we saw from the last six games we played this week.

“That's what you're gonna see for the next 30-plus that we have left -- we're gonna keep swinging, just see what happens until they tell us we're eliminated.”