D-backs manager Gibson a procrastinator with his lineup
Mar 30, 2012, 7:52 PM | Updated: 8:53 pm
One week from Friday Diamondbacks Manager Kirk Gibson will
have to post his starting lineup in the clubhouse for real
and the odds are…he literally won’t post it until Friday
morning.
Gibson likes to wait until the last possible moment when
setting his lineup, just in case he wakes up in the
morning with a particular gut feeling or thought on his
players.
“You guys know me, I don’t set my lineups. I won’t set
them now. I won’t set them the night before,” the manager
said. “I have maybe a sense of what I’m going to do. I’ll
think it over right up until the time I close my eyes and
when I wake up I’ll give it some thought.”
Gibson also likes to get the opinions of his coaches some
days, even allowing them to pick their own lineups for
discussion.
“Sometimes I come in and I’m settled and sometimes I’m
not,” he said. “Sometimes I walk in and have my coaches
throw a lineup up on the board for me; or I give them two
or three different ones and we have a discussion about
it.”
In the end, Gibson’s goal is to keep opposing teams on
their toes each day.
“We’re a versatile lineup and we’re a versatile team,”
Gibson said. “That’s what we want to be. We want to be
hard to predict and we want guys that can do many things
in many situations.”
That can come in handy, especially when a team plays its
division rivals 18 times each season.
