Gibson not panicking, focusing on the positives

The Diamondbacks struggled mightily in a 16-3 loss to the Texas Rangers at Salt River Fields Tuesday, but manager Kirk Gibson isn’t panicking.

“It’s all positive; I mean results aren’t what you want to do,” Gibson said. “You’d like to win but we’ll just take the information in and focus on the execution. We mis-executed a couple things but those are the types of things we look for and we’ll keep making note of and as we progress we should get better.”

Despite the shelling, D-backs’ starter Joe Saunders wasn’t to blame. The southpaw surrendered 5 hits and 2 runs and felt good about his performance. Far more disconcerting is the fact that since Saturday, the D-backs have been outscored 33-9. Their defense hasn’t been immune to the troubles either, having allowed eight errors in that same time frame.

It’s far too early in Spring Training to draw any conclusions about the D-backs’ play from this small sample size of games. For Gibson, the eternal optimist, no bump in the road is too much for his troops to overcome.

“The guys got to grind through it, we’ve been through it before and you just come back tomorrow with a good positive attitude,” Gibson stated.

Being able to keep his team focused and on an even-keel are key reasons why Gibson had so much success managing a young D-backs team to the NL West title last season. Instead of lamenting about the game you lost, Gibson’s mantra is to look ahead to how you can win the next one.

Gibson’s already turned his attention to Wednesday’s contest against the Indians when one of the D-backs’ most talked about offseason acquisitions makes his debut.

“Tomorrow [Wednesday] we’ll get Cahill going and on Friday we’ll probably be on our second time around so we’ll focus on some different things then,” Gibson said.

The D-backs’ hurlers will look to bounce back and find consistency through their second rotation this spring.

Arizona Sports’ Kyndra de St. Aubin contributed to this report

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