Your miles per Gallen may vary

The Detroit Tigers agreed on Wednesday to a 3-year, $115 million contract with lefty Framber Valdez, the last of a very small number of impact free agent starters this winter, sending Orioles fans into the latest in an ongoing series of crashouts about the rotation. But this post isn't about Valdez, it's about the next most logical target: Zac Gallen.

Many Orioles fans are likely groaning at the prospect of having to lower their expectations yet again. Gallen is not the kind of pitcher most imagined as the significant rotation upgrade the Orioles were hunting for. That said, it's difficult to reach consensus on who Gallen really is, because we've seen several versions of him over the years, and the 2025 numbers don't look good.

There is Zac Gallen the ace, who from 2022-2023 ate 394 innings with a 3.04 ERA and 9.4 fWAR. Then there's the Gallen of 2024, who was still very effective despite diminished stuff and a hamstring injury that kept him out for about a month in the middle of the season.

And then there's 2025 Gallen, who was, at least superficially, pretty bad across the board. He bounced back to make 33 starts and eat 192 innings, but with an ugly 4.82 ERA and the worst rate stats of his career. But those rate stats were more pedestrian than awful, and his 4.28 xERA and 4.12 xFIP point to a useful, if unspectacular, starter. Most projections for 2026 come in around that level.

But dig a little deeper into the splits and it becomes clear that Gallen was a completely different pitcher before (17 GS, 97 IP) and after (16 GS, 95 IP) July 1:

Editor's note: Embedding a table in a blog is just as much of a pain in the ass now as it was 20 years ago. If any CSS experts want to help me fix this, please reach out.

The table above compares a broad sample of numbers, from ERA and its indicators to advanced rate stats to velocity and stuff. Gallen was significantly better in every category after July 1. He did it by clawing back some velocity, improving his command and diversifying his pitch mix, including the introduction of a sinker and continued use of secondaries that give him a little more east-west movement, reducing his reliance on north-south tunneling between his four-seam and curveball, which has lost effectiveness and didn't recover much in the second half. Improving that curveball shape and recovering some stuff would obviously help quite a bit, but I think there's a strong case that Gallen has figured out how to be effective as is. Compare his post-July 1 and career numbers:

Most of these numbers are very close, with a slight edge to his career averages, but it's notable that second-half Gallen reduced his walk rate and improved his groundball rate through better command and pitch mix, accepting the tradeoff in walk rate. And while his curveball isn't what it used to be, he fully recovered his fastball, with some of the best velocity of his career and a Stuff+ grade in line with career norms.

Zac Gallen is not Framber Valdez. He's not even peak Zac Gallen, not anymore. There's more work to be done (the sinker shape could be better, for example), and real risk that he's living too close to a threshold of effectiveness, but this most recent version of Gallen, over a sample of 16 starts and 95 IP, looks like a durable mid-rotation arm — certainly good enough to start somewhere in a playoff rotation — while the floor looks like a durable backend arm.