Torey Lovullo Praises 2 Pitchers' Resurgence

The Arizona Diamondbacks have benefited from a surprise recent surge by some of their struggling veteran starting pitchers.

Both Zac Gallen and Eduardo Rodriguez, who spent most of the 2025 season as sources of major frustration for D-backs fans, have been pitching exceptionally well of late.

Rodriguez particularly so. The southpaw has delivered three straight six-inning Quality Starts, including two shutouts.

He has allowed one earned run in his last 18.1 innings, and it hasn't come against bad teams either, downing the Dodgers, Red Sox and Giants.

Gallen, meanwhile, struggled against the Giants, but stacked together an excellent month of August, throwing to a 2.57 ERA over six starts, and opened September with another six-inning shutout.

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On Friday, manager Torey Lovullo spoke to Arizona Sports 98.7's Burns & Gambo about his two revitalized veteran hurlers.

Arizona Diamondbacks' Torey Lovullo on Zac Gallen, Eduardo Rodriguez

"[Rodriguez is] an enigma, right?" Lovullo said.

"He can just go up there and pump strikes and it's clean, and that's a gift. He just has great dexterity in his fingertips, repeats his delivery, which equals a ton of strikes, and he fills up the zone.

"The problem that he was having was he was probably getting too much in the middle of the zone, throwing balls in the meat of the plate, and big league hitters don't miss that," Lovullo said.

The manager said he's seen progress from Rodriguez in that department.

"I think he's just continued to fine-tune that delivery and work edges, and when he's working the edges, controlling counts, and then he had a really good breaking ball the other day in San Francisco.

"That's, to me, the one thing that stood out. That's a work in progress for him at all times. But he knows how to pitch, doesn't get rattled, he's going to pound the zone, and when he's working edges, he becomes very, very good," Lovullo said.

It's been a similar curve for Gallen. The former ace had not looked like himself for some time, mostly due to a difficulty in landing his fastball for strikes. That has been a notable improvement for the righty in recent days.

"Gallen's the same way," said Lovullo. "Gallen's been doing a really nice job of working edges and pressing that fastball in the zone. He's a guy that gets ahead of you and will kind of nibble at the zone. I don't think that's the case in the scouting report on Zac anymore."

"You better get your A game ready because he's coming at you full bore for every pitch that he throws," Lovullo said.

The D-backs have not gone quietly, and it's been largely due to the effort of their veteran starters.

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