{"id":619870,"date":"2026-03-12T08:54:28","date_gmt":"2026-03-12T08:54:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/619870\/"},"modified":"2026-03-12T08:54:28","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T08:54:28","slug":"zac-gallen-to-start-opening-day-amid-merrill-kelly-injury","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/619870\/","title":{"rendered":"Zac Gallen to start Opening Day amid Merrill Kelly injury"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Arizona Diamondbacks recently got some tough news<\/a> when it was announced that free agent signee Merrill Kelly would be sidelined to open up<\/a> the 2026 season due to a back injury. Kelly signed with the Diamondbacks this offseason, reuniting him with the team that he helped lead to the World Series back in 2023.<\/p>\n

Now, more information has come to light on the team’s contingency plan<\/a> with Kelly currently out of the lineup.<\/p>\n

\u201cZac Gallen<\/a> will start Opening Day,\u201d reported Steve Gilbert of MLB.com on X, formerly Twitter.<\/p>\n

Gallen, of course, is a reliable presence for the Diamondbacks, having been with the team since the 2019 season, making an All-Star team back in 2023 during the team’s miraculous run to the World Series.<\/p>\n

The team also recently got an optimistic outlook<\/a> on Kelly’s availability from manager Torey Lovullo.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt looked like everything was coming out OK,\u201d Lovullo said of Kelly’s recent reps at a live batting session, per Gilbert. \u201cHe was able to get on the mound. No setbacks or limitations between pitches, so I feel like things went well. I asked the people in back of me what his velo was and it was 90 mph, up to 93 mph, so that\u2019s pretty normal. The stuff looked sharp.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Diamondbacks are hoping to make the playoffs this year for the first time since that 2023 run, which ended with a tough loss at the hands of the Texas Rangers in the World Series.<\/p>\n

Arizona will get its 2026 campaign underway with a road series against the Los Angeles Dodgers later this month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Arizona Diamondbacks recently got some tough news when it was announced that free agent signee Merrill Kelly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":619871,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2404],"tags":[146,22,4314,5,38,660,4,86],"class_list":{"0":"post-619870","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arizona-diamondbacks","8":"tag-arizona","9":"tag-arizona-diamondbacks","10":"tag-arizonadiamondbacks","11":"tag-baseball","12":"tag-diamondbacks","13":"tag-merrill-kelly","14":"tag-mlb","15":"tag-zac-gallen"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116215366618999324","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=619870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619870\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/619871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=619870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=619870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=619870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}