Gibson preaching defense to Goldschmidt
Mar 16, 2012, 2:11 AM | Updated: 3:23 am
Nobody questions the offensive power of Paul Goldschmidt. The first baseman crushed a grand slam over the left field wall in the Diamondbacks’ win over the Cubs Thursday at Hohokam Park. But manager Kirk Gibson is preaching the importance of playing strong, fundamental defense to his young player.
“I told him it’s defense number one, we know he can hit,” Gibson said. “For us, it’s really our infielders and our outfielders and position guys, it’s gotta be defense first.”
Goldschmidt was hitting just .174 before Thursday’s game, but he hit eight home runs in 156 at-bats last season with the Big League club.
“Let your big body and your big muscles supply the power,” Gibson said. “He’s actually been having better at-bats and we’ll get him extra BP and stuff. We’ll probably have him go over to a minor league game here in the near future, you know get a ton of at-bats and just try and get him to relax.”
Gibson thinks the offense will continue to improve this spring but he also thinks that everything works together. He seems to believe that poor defense can affect one’s performance at the plate as well.
“We gotta know we can hit and sometimes the hitting affects the most important thing in the wrong way so we want to stay focused on that fact,” Gibson stated.
Right now the Diamondbacks are 24th overall in batting average and 25th overall in fielding percentage out of 30 teams. Maybe Gibson is right, there could be a correlation between offense and defense, but only time will tell.
