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After 78 Years, Is It Time for the Chronicle’s Little Man to Retire?

The San Francisco paper’s influential personified ratings icon, beloved by many readers, is facing fresh pushback from local theatre artists.

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Long before the age of emojis, decades before even the thumbs-up/thumbs-down metric of film mavens Siskel & Ebert, San Francisco Chronicle readers were bequeathed their own shorthand consumer metric for films and plays, the so-called Little Man. For a black-and-white cartoon with a diminutive name, Little Man has loomed especially large and long over Bay Area arts. Created in 1942 by late cartoonist Warren Goodrich , he is a star rating system personified in the form of a bald white man in a theatre seat with five possible positions: In the first, he is either leaping out of, or crouching on the edge of, his seat, clapping so ecstatically hard that his bowler hat has been knocked to the floor, which obviously means the Chronicle ’s critic thinks your movie or show is a must-see; in the next, he applauds enthusiastically, still a strong recommendation. In the third (and most contested) pose, he sits crisply at attention but does not clap, which connotes some liminal range between positive interest and polite indifference. The last two—nodding off or absent altogether—speak for themselves, albeit with exaggerated rudeness.

“It’s a very visceral icon, and always has been—it’s really buzzy,” says Pam MacKinnon, who took over as artistic director of American Conservatory Theater in 2018 . Those are the nicest things MacKinnon can say about the Little Man, though. As she attempts to create a forward-looking organization based on principles of equity, diversity, and inclusion, and as she brings in a wide range of national artists to ACT to write, direct, and perform, she has found herself increasingly questioning the relevance of this nearly-80-year-old cartoon as an avatar for contemporary Bay Area theatregoers.

“I don’t use this term lightly, but I think it’s true in this case: It’s a white supremacist icon,” says MacKinnon. She recalls the response of playwright Lydia R. Diamond, whose play Toni Stone begins performances at ACT on March 5, when she saw the Little Man: “Whoa—that guy has a jockey on his lawn.” It’s an image “made in another time, and very particular to that time,” says MacKinnon.

To be clear, MacKinnon doesn’t expect the Chronicle , or theatre critics more generally, to only give good reviews or to do her marketing for her. But she would hope that the local press could be a partner in “figuring out how theatre can punch through and get attention in this market. I’m really trying to open this theatre up and say, ‘This is your theatre, San Francisco.’ What is San Francisco? It’s 30 percent Asian, it’s very young, it’s Black as well as white.” Zooming out, she concludes, “This is a really exciting, dynamic time, and the field is talking about big stuff. I want my guest artists to feel welcomed, and this icon from the 1940s gets in the way of my ability to host them with a clear conscience.”

Asked about the Little Man, the Chronicle ’s senior editor for arts and entertainment, Robert Morast, concedes that he’s “polarizing.” Morast, too, sees the pros and cons: “I hear all the time that readers look to the Little Man, and from my standpoint, that’s good and bad. I love it as a branding thing, and for a lot of people it seems hard for there to be a review and not have a rating.” On the other hand, the Little Man only appears with reviews for film and theatre, not for classical music, opera, or fine arts—a vestige of “longstanding rules and traditions,” Morast explains, “that are worth looking at. I totally understand the criticism.”

Lily Janiak, the Chronicle ’s chief theatre critic since 2016 , shares some of the local ambivalence about the Little Man, not least because he “is not me in very visible ways, and he looks like he somehow has authority over me.” But she nods to his pop-cultural appeal, sharing a popular anecdote about how, when local native Darren Criss moved away from the area, he was surprised to find that not every city’s newspaper had a Little Man with their reviews. “It’s a nice, clear guide for consumers,” Janiak concedes, “not just whether you should go to the show but whether you should keep reading the review or not. Which is where it gets tricky for me.”

Indeed, leaving aside the specific issues of the Little Man as a cultural signifier, there’s the question of ratings systems in general. Do they simply reduce critics’ work to math? Do they encourage or discourage readers from, well, reading? They are not universally used, even in major markets: In New York City, only Time Out New York , New York Post , and New York Daily News use star ratings, and Chicago Tribune does as well. And unlike in San Francisco, these are not longstanding customs: Time Out only began giving stars in 2006, and the Tribune “some time in the aughts,” according to critic Chris Jones, as “one of many so-called customer-friendly features introduced by our capitalist owners.”

“It can be very handy for readers, as a form of immediate shorthand,” says Adam Feldman, Time Out NY ’s theatre editor. “It can be frustrating when you want to make a more complicated point or have a more complicated reaction, and you have to quantify it somehow.” What’s more, he adds, “It’s human nature that people are more likely to read a review that is very positive or very negative. The three-star review is less likely to be read.”

Jones has “made peace” with the Tribune ’s star rating system because, as he puts it, “It gives enormous power to a four-star review. Anyone can immediately grasp that this is a must-see. I have found over the years that this can help the shows that really need it.”

Jasson Minadakis, artistic director of Marin Theatre Company , can testify to the local influence of the Little Man’s most superlative stance.

“It’s a double-edged sword,” says Minadakis. “When you get the top-rated one, where he’s standing on the leg of his chair—bad behavior in the theatre, by the way—that definitely affects ticket sales. It’s not a negligible thing for my company. It’s literally triple the ticket sales that would happen otherwise, amounting to tens of thousands of dollars.”

Any rating below ecstasy, though, is another story. “The second one, the applauding man, can work if the headline is good,” Minadakis says. “The staring guy and below will halt single-ticket sales.” Says his colleague, Kate Robinson, Marin’s director of ticketing and communications associate, “I don’t think it’s teaching audiences to engage in a human way with a show. It’s teaching them to come into our theatre and have a very superficial response.”

That’s where a thoughtful critic ought to come in, right? Janiak admits her ongoing issues with the Little Man—she particularly objects to the sleeping icon, not only because she would never doze off at the theatre (heaven forfend!) but because she is more likely to give a two-star rating to show that enrages her than one that bores her. But short of suggesting such half-joking alternatives as “a unicorn jumping over a rainbow,” she has bigger fish to fry than the Little Man.  

“Among all the battles I could fight, that is not the charge I’m leading,” says Janiak. “Trying to say that even a middling review of a small company is worthwhile—that’s the hill I’m going to die on. I actually feel I have support for that there; I’m not fighting for my existence.” Her challenge, in an age of declining attention spans and click metrics, is to “write in such a way that you have to read the article, even if you only see the headline, deck, first sentence—and the Little Man.”

Interestingly, when Soleil Ho was hired last year as the Chronicle ’s food critic, she successfully lobbied to have all ratings taken off her reviews—a major thrown gauntlet in a very Yelp-ified, everyone’s-a-critic realm. Might this also offer a possible green shoot of hope for the endangered cause of nuance in the age of tl;dr? Janiak says she plans to confer with Ho about this policy, adding hopefully, “I would be pretty okay just being able to express myself with words.”

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Austin Kleon

THE LITTLE MAN

Friday, September 19, 2008

Yesterday I read this little paragraph in Roger Ebert’s response to claims that he gives out too many stars :

The only rating system that makes any sense is the Little Man of the San Franciscio Chronicle, who is seen (1) jumping out of his seat and applauding wildly; (2) sitting up happily and applauding; (3) sitting attentively; (4) asleep in his seat; or (5) gone from his seat….The blessing of the Little Man system is that it offers a true middle position, like three on a five-star scale.

So I did a little research. The Little Man was the creation of Chronicle artist Warren Goodrich in the early 40s :

On the occasion of the Little Man’s 50th birthday, Goodrich recalled it was just another assignment that he dashed off quickly, noting, “I’m surprised (it) continued.”…Goodrich, who died last year, once recalled that a woman (possibly a disgruntled actress) once hit him on the head with her umbrella and said, “I hate the Little Man!”

The woman isn’t alone. Many of the writers at the Chronicle hate The Little Man . They boo-hoo that the picture already tells the story !

The beloved icon of this newspaper’s entertainment sections is, in fact, a complete nuisance to criticism….That’s because the Little Man gives you a visual clue to what you’re about to read .

And they complain about what Ebert loves: the middle man on the scale—the man with ambiguous feelings.

[T]he message is often unclear…when he’s merely sitting in his chair, watching. Not clapping. Not jumping out of his seat and clapping. Not slumped in his seat. Not out of his seat. Just sitting there.

I suppose a comment could be made here about how people can’t handle ambiguity in their lives: they want things to be black and white, with no shades of grey. As Ebert quotes Siskel,

“What’s the first thing people ask you? Should I see this movie? They don’t want a speech on the director’s career. Thumbs up–yes. Thumbs down–no.”

In fact, the editorial staff was so bothered by the neutral middle man that they had him redesigned:

Few are aware that the L.M. was retrofitted about 10 years ago with a more benign expression. The Little Man pose in between the politely applauding and the snoozing Little Man was redesigned in a microscopic makeover: the “alert viewer” Little Man’s expressionless mouth was tweaked with a slight upturned curve, to indicate a hint of a Mona Lisa smile, suggesting a vague amusement. His raised eyebrows indicate interest but not quite approval, denoting mixed feelings. After artistic spinal fusion, he also sat up more alertly, signifying a mixed review. All of this came after Talmudic editorial discussions about the meaning of the enigmatic No. 3 Little Man: Did his indecipherable gaze indicate intrigue or ennui? Polite diffidence or glazed-eyed apathy? As a Datebook editor noted, “He’s the middle child, and the most unmanageable.”

I say: 3 on a 1 out of 5 scale should be ambiguous and neutral. Instead, he’s upright as if he’s engaged and smiling, as if he’s liking it. His back should be against the chair:

And to be totally ambiguous, his mouth should be a straight line (or no line at all), with no eyebrows. A blank face:

An ambiguous visual calls for explanatory text! And so, the neutral man is a friend to the good critic: if the visual is ambiguous, then the reader should be more tempted to investigate the article text to get the writer’s take!

Note: this was a repost from my tumblelog . Apologies for doubling up.

Friday, September 19, 2008 at 10:32 pm

I kind of like the Little Man myself – and agree he should be sitting back with a neutral face, but maybe he could also have one leg crossed and resting on the opposite knee? So he’s not planning to leave, but is braced against tipping sideways if boredom makes him sleepy.

Annie at the Transplantable Rose

Saturday, September 20, 2008 at 4:16 pm

I agree completely with the version of the neutral man with the blank face and his back against the chair, in fact, I was thinking that’s how he should be while I was reading the beginning of the article. However it would be a near-PERFECT system if in between neutral man and clapping man there was that straight-backed, alert, mona lisa smile guy. So, it’d be a six point rating system and what’s the problem with that? Mona Lisa man is, let’s say, in Ebert’s star-system, a 3.5 perhaps.

Saturday, September 20, 2008 at 9:13 pm

Thanks for the informative post, and I definitely agree with Dana on adding the ‘other’ middle man. I would give this post, between the alert attentive middle man and the clapping one, or a 4.5 out of 6. Where did you get the images?

Sunday, September 21, 2008 at 8:53 am

Annie: that’s always the tough question when designing symbols and icons. “How much detail do you put in?”

Dana & Tom: Hmmm…I totally disagree! I think you need an odd-numbered scale to give you that middle number that’s neither good nor bad.

I got the images, btw, from the San Francisco Chronicle’s site.

Sunday, September 21, 2008 at 8:45 pm

ha, I hear you. that smiling dude just seems out of place. maybe we can up it to seven.

Wednesday, July 8, 2009 at 6:29 pm

Well, you caint please ’em all. Or, really, much of anyone. I think the “little man” is certainly better than any “star” system I’ve yet seen. But as to the little fellow’s position and facial expression, readers/writers should remember that this is the way that THEY see it: straight back, Mona Lisa smile (Jesus: folk have debating that one for centuries without ever reaching consensus!) Which doesn’t mean that they aren’t correct. But so are those who see it differently. That’s why I refuse to use a rating on my blog. Read me — and figure it out for yourself.

Sunday, May 16, 2010 at 5:55 pm

Many years ago, I purchased a pink t-shirt with the little movie review man on it. The shirt had him in 3 or 4 stages of ‘rating’s Is it possible to buy these shirts today ?

[…] the yardstick by which he generates the “stars,” “thumbs,” or “Little Man” of his reviews, it would go a long way toward educating readers; as well as, I’d […]

[…] Little Man is sitting up and watching intently but not applauding, at least until the credits […]

[…] this day, my favorite review tool/ranking system is The Little Man in the San Francisco Chronicle.  Do I like it because as an artist, it provides me visual […]

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Little Man, Big Adventures

Since the early 1940s, the small bald guy in the bowler hat has been the Bay Area's arbiter of good taste. Used by Chronicle critics as a rating icon, he really gets around — to movies, live theater, concerts and football games.

Updated: 4 a.m. Feb. 19, 2020

Winter, spring, summer and fall … the Little Man guided you through it all. Follow along on an illustrated tour of some of the places The Chronicle dispatched him.

When researching the Bay Area Summer Fun Guide, the Little Man was anything but bored.

In the Fall Arts Preview, the Little Man had the inside scoop on the best music, dance, theater and fall colors in the region.

Frame by frame

Experience the bay area through exceptional photojournalism..

At Halloween, the Little Man made sure there were no tricks with your treats, rating the area’s favorite haunts.

When Chase Center opened, the Little Man helped officiate the “Race to Chase” to discover the fastest way to get to the downtown arena.

When the holidays arrived, so did a new batch of movies. The Little Man sorted through all the offerings — from joyous Christmas classics to serious takes on socially relevant topics.

With our list of the year’s worst movies, the Little Man reminded us of the films that made him feel like a prisoner in butter-stained seats.

The calendar is now flipped to 2020, so stay tuned to see what the Little Man is up to next.

Visuals by Steven Boyle

Words by Mike Massa

The Little Man, in all his poses, is a trademark of Hearst Communications Inc.

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Between 1968 and 1983, a San Francisco cartoonist becomes an amateur detective obsessed with tracking down the Zodiac Killer, an unidentified individual who terrorizes Northern California wi... Read all Between 1968 and 1983, a San Francisco cartoonist becomes an amateur detective obsessed with tracking down the Zodiac Killer, an unidentified individual who terrorizes Northern California with a killing spree. Between 1968 and 1983, a San Francisco cartoonist becomes an amateur detective obsessed with tracking down the Zodiac Killer, an unidentified individual who terrorizes Northern California with a killing spree.

• David Fincher
• James Vanderbilt
• Robert Graysmith
• Jake Gyllenhaal
• Robert Downey Jr.
• Mark Ruffalo
• 985 User reviews
• 427 Critic reviews
• 79 Metascore
• 3 wins & 71 nominations

• Inspector David Toschi

• Inspector William Armstrong

• Melvin Belli

• Arthur Leigh Allen

• Templeton Peck

• Charles Thieriot

• Carol Fisher

• Sgt. Jack Mulanax

• Captain Marty Lee

• Captain Ken Narlow

• Mrs. Toschi
• (as June Raphael)
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

• Trivia The Zodiac case was re-opened after the release of the film.
• Goofs (at around 52 mins) One of the books Robert Graysmith has in 1969 has a barcode on the back. Barcodes did not even exist in any stores until the summer of 1974, and most items did not contain barcodes for several years after that.

Arthur Leigh Allen : I am not the Zodiac. And if I was, I certainly wouldn't tell you.

• Crazy credits The end text reads as follows: Following Mike Mageau's identification of Arthur Leigh Allen, authorities scheduled a meeting to discuss charging him with the murders. Allen suffered a fatal heart attack before this meeting could take place. In 2002, a partial DNA profile, that did not match Allen, was developed from a 33 year-old Zodiac envelope. Investigators in San Francisco and Vallejo refused to rule out Allen as a suspect on the basis of this test. In 2004, the San Francisco Police Department deactivated their Zodiac investigation. Today, the case remains open in Napa County, Solano County, and in the city of Vallejo, where Arthur Leigh Allen is still the prime and only suspect. Inspector David Toschi retired from the San Francisco Police Department in 1989. He was cleared of all charges that he wrote the 1978 Zodiac letter. Paul Avery passed away on December 10, 2000 of pulmonary emphysema. He was 66. His Ashes were scattered by his family in the San Francisco Bay. Robert Graysmith lives in San Francisco and enjoys a healthy relationship with his children. He claims he has not received a single anonymous call since Allen's death.
• Melvin Belli (Brian Cox) talks about his Safari trip (when the Zodiac letter came to his house)
• Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) introduces himself to the Riverside Police Chief
• A new scene between Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Avery (Robert Downey Jr.)
• A three-way conversation laying Leigh as a suspect to get a search warrant
• Extended audio montage (over a black screen)
• Plus extra bits of dialogue
• Connections Featured in Siskel & Ebert: Zodiac/Gray Matters/Wild Hogs/Smarter for 10 (2007)
• Soundtracks Hurdy Gurdy Man Written by Donovan (as Donovan Leitch) Performed by Donovan Courtesy of Epic Records and EMI Records Ltd. By arrangement with Sony BMG Music Entertainment

User reviews 985

• Feb 27, 2007
• Why do houses in San Francisco seldom have basements?
• What is 'Zodiac' about?
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• March 2, 2007 (United States)
• United States
• Vallejo, California, USA (location)
• Paramount Pictures
• Warner Bros.
• Phoenix Pictures
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $65,000,000 (estimated)
• $33,080,084
• $13,395,610
• Mar 4, 2007
• $84,786,496

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• Dolby Digital

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Marvel star Jeremy Renner takes first movie role since Tahoe snowplow accident

Jeremy Renner has taken his first movie role since his near-fatal snowplow accident.

The Marvel star is set to appear in the third “Knives Out” film, the Hollywood Reporter confirmed on Friday, May 31. 

Renner joins previously announced cast members Daniel Craig, Glenn Close, Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, Josh O’Connor and Cailee Spaeny in the forthcoming film, “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery.” 

Rian Johnson is again writing, directing and co-producing with his T-Street partner, Ram Bergman, who also worked on the first two movies.

Renner, an Oscar-nominated Modesto native who has played Hawkeye in the Marvel Cinematic Universe since 2011, is on the mend after his near-fatal snow plow accident at his home near the Mount Rose Ski Tahoe resort in January 2023 that broke more than 38 bones in his body and left him in critical condition.

During an appearance on “The Kelly Clarkson Show” on Thursday, May 30, the 53-year-old said one of the most tragic aspects of the accident, which occurred while he was trying to save his nephew from getting run over, was the memory loss he suffered.

“I even forgot about my daughter. That’s how messed up I was in this accident,” Renner told Clarkson. “But once I got off life support and got home after a couple weeks, my sister told me that, you know, Ava was here. That’s when it all kicked in for me.”

Renner described his 11-year-old daughter, whom he shares with ex-wife, Sonni Pacheco, as his “life force.”

“I saw the fear on my daughter’s face for the first time,” he said. “The reality of what transpired really set in. What I had done to my daughter, what I actually did to my nephew, to my whole family, that really set in. So I asked her to wait for me.”

He said that he explained to her, “ ‘These are just 38 broken bones, darling, and they’re all going to heal. And I promise, if you wait for me, I’ll be better, I’ll be faster, I’ll be stronger than you’ve ever seen before. I promise.’ ”

Renner added that the incident inspired him to write a song called “Wait,” which he recorded with friends.

“We all kind of wanted to heal from the incident,” he said. “Anybody that cared for me prior to the accident also went through stuff. So doing it musically was very cathartic for us, and even for my daughter because she was very much a part of it.” 

In February, Renner was seen at Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas rooting for the San Francisco 49ers and later made one of his first, on-camera appearances since the accident at the People’s Choice Awards at the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, reuniting with Marvel’s “Loki” actor Tom Hiddleston . 

At the awards ceremony, Renner was met with a standing ovation as he presented the award for the TV performance of the year to Billie Eilish for her role in Prime Video’s limited series “ Swarm .”

Renner also filmed a few episodes of the Paramount+ drama series “ Mayor of Kingstown ” a year after the accident, with new episodes set to premiere in June.

“Knives Out: Wake Up Dead Man” is set to begin production shortly and is scheduled for a 2025 release. 

Reach Aidin Vaziri: [email protected]

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Homeless shelter staff didn’t check the bathrooms for a week for missing man. Then residents reported a rancid smell

A hotel used as a supporting housing complex did not check an out-of-order bathroom after a man was reported missing, only to smell something rancid and discover his decomposing body.

The Adler Hotel, which is home to 116 supportive housing units provided by the Episcopal Community Services (ECS) in San Francisco, has been given areas of immediate action after a man was reportedly found dead, after he went missing over a week ago, in an out-of-order bathroom in the facility.

James Martin Rinkes, 53, was still deemed as missing when a tenant reported an awful smell coming out of a bathroom in January, according to a five-page report from San Francisco’s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing obtained by the San Francisco Chronicle .

The bathroom had been out of order for several weeks, and staff only went in and checked inside after people noticed a liquid with a “foul odor” seeping out from under the door.

Once opened, they reportedly found Rinkes lying over the bathroom’s two toilets, having died of a fentanyl overdose, city records showed.

Speaking to Rinkes’ older sister, Connie McCort, who lives in Ohio, she told the Chronicle that her brother had been “homeless for a long time” and that her family had lost contact with him.

“Homeless people have it really hard, and I knew Jimmy would never turn his life around,” she told the outlet.

She said that she received her brother’s ashes two weeks ago from the San Francisco Medical Examiner, and spread them on the graves of his mother, father and his brother.

While she admits that her brother was “too lost”, she did say that the “employees in those homes are getting paid and should be looking after people living there. None of it adds up”.

City officials claim that the hotel staff failed to do a comprehensive search of the hotel after he was reported as missing and failed to check the bathroom until several days after the foul smell was reported.

The officials relayed in the report, that the Chronicle obtained, that there was a “lack of communication and collaboration” between property managers, janitors and desk clerks, among other staff, which led to the man’s body going undiscovered for days in the shared bathroom.

After the horrific incident surrounding Rinkes’ body unknowingly being left to decompose, the City’s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing wrote that there are areas that need immediate improvement.

This included having the hotel staff do more rigorous searches if a tenant goes missing, having higher quality wellness check training, as well as suggesting that ESC staff and property managers do a weekly site walkthrough.

ECS told the outlet in a statement that the incident has “prompted (the homelessness department) to update their Wellness Check policies across the entire system”.

“We are in compliance with all of the recommendations,” the community services organization wrote. “We made the majority of the recommendations to HSH after our own internal investigations, and most had been implemented even prior to receiving the Corrective Action Notice.”

Since 1983, ECS has provided services to individuals and families experiencing homelessness in San Francisco, serving more than 13,000 people this past year by helping them obtain housing, jobs, shelter and essential services, their website states.

Deborah Bouck, a spokesperson for the city’s homelessness department, also confirmed that “ECS has complied with all components of the corrective action letter related to the Alder Hotel”.

Ms Bouch added that, like what ECS said, this incident has galvanized reforms within their department, such as working on small revisions to their wellness and emergency safety check policy.

This will include adding “information on checking shared bathrooms and other common areas as part of the wellness check process”, Ms Bouch said.

The Independent has contacted ECS and San Francisco’s Homelessness Department for further comment.

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Diamondbacks ace Zac Gallen appears headed to injured list after straining right hamstring

Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher Zac Gallen leaves the team’s baseball game against the New York Mets during the first inning Thursday, May 30, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Noah K. Murray)

Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher Zac Gallen leaves during the first inning of the team’s baseball game against the New York Mets, Thursday, May 30, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Noah K. Murray)

Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher Zac Gallen pauses with third baseman Eugenio Suárez, left and and catcher Gabriel Moreno, right, after an injury during the first inning of the team’s baseball game against the New York Mets, Thursday, May 30, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Noah K. Murray)

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NEW YORK (AP) — Arizona Diamondbacks ace Zac Gallen appears headed to the injured list after straining his right hamstring five pitches into Thursday night’s 3-2 loss to the New York Mets .

The 28-year-old right-hander, who finished among the top five in NL Cy Young Award voting in each of the last two seasons, was scheduled to return to Phoenix on Friday for a scan.

Gallen felt the injury on his knuckle-curve that Francisco Lindor lined to center for a leadoff single.

Gallen hopped after releasing a fastball to DJ Stewart, his second batter. Manager Torey Lovullo and an athletic trainer went to the mound, and Gallen limped as he walked to the dugout.

“Hamstring grabbed on me, so I threw another pitch to see if it was severe and sense if I could keep pitching or not, if it was more like a cramp,” Gallen said. “Just knew that I couldn’t really keep going or if I did I would put the team in jeopardy of not giving them a chance to win.”

Manager Torey Lovullo was forced to use his bullpen to get 24 outs from Bryce Jarvis (one inning), Brandon Hughes (1 2/3 innings), Justin Martinez (three innings), Joe Mantiply (two outs), Ryan Thompson (one inning) and Kevin Ginkel (two outs).

Lovullo said he likely would wait until results of the scan to determine a roster move. Seattle’s Triple-A team, the Reno Aces, was at home, complicating bringing a minor leaguer to New York as a replacement for Gallen, who is 5-2 with a 3.12 ERA in 11 starts.

“We’re going to get him back to Arizona. We feel comfortable doing that and we feel like that’s the safest bet to get the right evaluation and get more detail on exactly what he’s feeling,” Lovullo said. “It’s not great news. I’m not going to lie, and we will eventually find out what the solutions are.”

Gallen left a start on April 26 at Seattle with a man on and no outs in the sixth after a fastball to Julio Rodríguez because of right hamstring tightness, and said he felt tightness akin to a cramp during the third or fourth inning of a May 18 outing against Detroit.

“The one in Seattle was a little bit more minor,” Gallen said. “This one, it’s a mild, I guess. It felt similar to kind of what I did in ’21.”

Gallen said the area of hamstring trouble was slightly different all three times this season.

“Just up and down,” he said.

Gallen missed two weeks because of his right hamstring in July 2021, when he didn’t pitch between July 2 and 17, and he also experienced a hamstring issue in 2019.

Gallen hoped any layoff will be similar to the one in 2021.

“It’s been three years now, so maybe my memory’s kind of a little bit fogged on that but, yeah, that one, it didn’t feel great, either, and wound up missing I think a start or two,” he said.

NL champion Arizona matched its season-low of six games under .500 at 25-31. The Diamondbacks already were missing right-hander Merrill Kelly, sidelined since April 15 by a strained right shoulder, and left-hander Eduardo Rodriguez, who signed an $80 million, four-year contract as a free agent and hasn’t pitched this season because of a strained pitching shoulder.

Arizona wasted a two-run lead and lost its fourth straight. The Diamondbacks have scored nine runs in their last six games.

“They’re absorbing it right now, and it’s painful. It hurts,” Lovullo said. “It hurts a lot because we care, and I’m OK with that. But at some point we got to be able to cycle through and understand why we lost this baseball game. There were some things we did wrong, and we just got to find a way to make them right, and we’re going to be just fine.”

AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb