Zac Gallen Still Has Time To Boost His Free Agent Earning Power

Assuming Gallen finishes fairly well over these last three starts, he will be an extremely interesting free agency case study, considering his high ceiling and low floor. It’s difficult to gauge what teams will be willing to pay him ahead of his age-30 season.

Gallen’s agent, Scott Boras, is known as a tough negotiator who seeks high dollar for his clients. This often leads to his clients staying on the market quite a while, and some of them, especially pitchers, have wound up signing short-term deals with opt-outs that allow them to re-enter the market after a better platform season.

Or, sometimes, Boras is able to get a big money deal like he did this past offseason for Blake Snell, who signed for $182 million (with deferrals) over five years after a one-year platform season with the Giants.

Although Gallen has 20.8 bWAR so far in his career, he’ll be entering free agency off a season of just 1.2 bWAR (as of today). FanGraphs lists him at just 17.4 fWAR in his career and only 0.9 fWAR for this season.

That kind of platform season could serve as a justification for teams to avoid paying the long-term, high-dollar contract that Gallen and Boras will be seeking, despite him being fairly healthy and productive over his seven-year MLB tenure.

That could lead him to decide to take a short-term pillow-like contract, such as the deals Snell and Jordan Montgomery signed after the 2023 season, when they were left on the market until February or March. This is quite possibly the most likely scenario for Gallen, as it’s pretty certain he’ll stay on the market for a while, given Boras’ history with pitchers like Gallen.

However, it takes just a single team to make an offer that Gallen and Boras would accept. In that scenario, Gallen won’t be the $35 million AAV pitcher that he was shaping up to be after 2023. But, with his track record, he’s more than a $20 million AAV pitcher, if 2025 turns out to be just a badly timed down year.

So, he could perhaps find his way to an Aaron Nola-esque deal. Nola got seven years at $172 million for a $23 million AAV in the 2023-24 offseason. Nola is a fairly close comp, in that he was a good No. 2 starter at the time, and Gallen is likely going to be a good No.2/3 should he continue rebounding.

However, if Gallen opts for a shorter deal, say three or four years with opt-outs, he might be able to secure an AAV in the $25 range, as Nathan Eovaldi earned last offseason and Sonny Gray did the year before. This would allow him to get the elusive and enticing higher AAV, but it could also get him back on the market sooner to get another big free agent contract in his early-to-mid-thirties.

At the end of the day, it’s a true guessing game because Zac Gallen is an established veteran pitcher who has been healthy arm-wise, was effective for numerous years, once took a no-hitter deep into a World Series game, but is grinding through a difficult walk-year.

The Arizona Diamondbacks will likely give him a qualifying offer, which will cost the team that signs him a draft pick. That will affect his market, limiting it to a certain degree.

That’s just one more issue that Gallen and Boras will have to overcome in free agency, and it’s always possible the Diamondbacks themselves bring him back on a pillow deal. However, it all depends on how he finishes over these last three starts. If they go well, it’ll go far in making teams think his first half was an aberration.