D-backs avoid arbitration with pair of former All-Stars

The Diamondbacks avoided arbitration with right-hander Zac Gallen and first baseman Josh Naylor, according to reports from Mark Feinsand of MLB.com and Robert Murray of FanSided. Gallen will earn $13.5M, while Naylor will command $10.9M. MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz had projected Gallen at $14.1M and Naylor at $10.9M. It’s the final year of club control for both players.

Gallen, 29, pitched 148 innings of 3.65 ERA ball last season, representing his lowest innings total and highest ERA of the past three seasons. The right-hander missed roughly a month with a hamstring strain, limiting his time on the mound and perhaps also impacting his performance.

At his best, Gallen is an All-Star and Cy Young-caliber arm. He finished in the top five of NL Cy Young balloting in 2022 and 2023, earning his lone career All-Star nod in the latter of those two seasons. Across those two years, Gallen pitched to a 3.04 ERA in 394 innings. Since making his big league debut with the Marlins in 2019 — Miami flipped him to Arizona that summer for Jazz Chisholm Jr. — Gallen touts a 3.29 ERA, 26.6% strikeout rate and 7.6% walk rate in 815 1/3 innings.

Gallen has long been the ace of Arizona’s staff, but he’ll at least nominally be bumped into the No. 2 spot of a potential powerhouse rotation in the wake of the D-backs’ shock signing of Corbin Burnes to a six-year, $210M deal. Burnes, Gallen, Merrill Kelly, Eduardo Rodriguez, Ryne Nelson, Brandon Pfaadt and rebound hopeful/trade candidate Jordan Montgomery give the Diamondbacks a wealth of rotation talent to lean on in the coming season.

Naylor, 27, came to Arizona last month in a trade that sent righty Slade Cecconi and a competitive balance draft pick back to the Guardians. Cleveland immediately pivoted and signed Carlos Santana to a one-year, $12M deal that mirrored the projection for Naylor. Cleveland will end up with the pricier of the two options at first base in the end, though they also added a controllable 25-year-old swingman and a pick in the high 60s of the 2025 draft.

The 2025 season will be Arizona’s lone year of control over Naylor, coming off a career-best 31 home runs. He turned in a .243/.320/.456 batting line in 2024, clocking in about 18% better than the league average by the measure of wRC+. His bat faded slightly in the season’s second half, but only relative to the huge first-half numbers Naylor posted (particularly in April and June). He was an above-average hitter in five of the season’s six months, per wRC+, with the lone exception being May when he was just 3% under par.

Put more succinctly, Naylor is a consistent slugger who’ll bolster the middle of the D-backs’ lineup in place of Christian Walker, who signed a three-year, $60M deal in Houston as a free agent (netting the Snakes a compensatory draft pick after the first round in the process). Naylor walked at a career-best 9.2% clip in 2024 and fanned at a 16.6% pace, considerably lower than the league average.

Gallen and Naylor are candidates to receive a qualifying offer from the D-backs at season’s end, positioning Arizona to net compensation in the 2026 draft for their potential departure. Gallen, in particular, is a veritable lock so long as he’s healthy. Naylor would also be a strong QO candidate if he replicates or approximates the .267/.330/.465 form he’s turned in over the past three seasons, as he’d reach the market at just 28 years of age.