CINCINNATI – By working into the seventh inning on Wednesday night, Diamondbacks rookie right-hander Zac Gallen established a new career-high in innings pitched. The Diamondbacks have no plans of slowing him down.

Clubs often monitor the innings totals of young pitchers in hopes of keeping them healthy. Often, teams will shut down pitchers after they make sizeable jumps from year to year.

But manager Torey Lovullo said that while the Diamondbacks have talked about doing that with Gallen, they’ve decided to stay the course, for now.

“Not right now – as long as we’re in this thing,” Lovullo said. “As long as we’re in it, he’s going to keep pitching.”

Gallen, 24, has logged 159 2/3 innings between Triple-A and the majors, splitting his big-league time between the Marlins and Diamondbacks, who acquired him via trade on July 31. With four starts remaining, he’s on pace for 183 1/3 innings, not counting the postseason.

That would be about 25 innings more than his previous career-high, established in 2017 between High-A, Double-A, Triple-A and the minor league playoffs.

“The team is playing well,” Gallen said. “We’re in the playoff hunt and you don’t want to be the guy that has to be skipped a start because of the innings or whatever. So I look at it as a huge positive for right now that they would count on me as much with as little experience I have.”

Gallen said one way he is trying to handle the extra workload is by keeping his between-starts bullpen sessions as streamlined as possible by working on one or two specific things rather than three things at a time.

Weaver’s latest

Right-hander Luke Weaver threw his second simulated game of the week, going two innings on 30 pitches in an outing at Salt River Fields on Friday, Lovullo said.

Lovullo said he would like Weaver to pitch at least once more, either in a simulated game or the minors, before coming off the injured list.

With the Diamondbacks still playing meaningful games, Lovullo said it makes it even more important that Weaver is fully ready to come back.

“If it were a September where we’re out of it, maybe we see what it looks like here,” Lovullo said. “Everything that we’re doing right now matters. We’re not going to put him in a situation where he might not be 100 percent ready. That doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

Short hops

Though the club had said earlier in the week that right-hander Taijuan Walker would throw off a mound for the first time on Friday, Walker instead threw another flatground session, Lovullo said, adding that he did not know why the there was a change of plans.

*The Diamondbacks recalled infielder Domingo Leyba from Triple-A Reno, bringing their September roster up to 33 players. Lovullo said the club wanted another bat off the bench, likes Leyba’s ability to switch-hit and believes he also can be an option to pinch-run.

Reach Piecoro at (602) 444-8680 or nick.piecoro@arizonarepublic.com. Follow him on Twitter @nickpiecoro.

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