Martin Prado had a nice debut for the Arizona Diamondbacks Monday night.

Hitting in the two-hole, the third baseman had two hits in five at-bats, scored twice and drove in a run.

However, it’s not just Prado’s stat line that has manager
Kirk Gibson singing his praises one game into the season.

The D-backs’ skipper told Arizona Sports 620’s Burns and Gambo that his unselfishness at the plate aided in executing the game plan against St. Louis on Opening Night.

“He got right up there the first pitch and all he cared about was getting Parra over,” he said.

Prado demonstrated how he fits into the D-backs’ blueprint for winning this year, hitting a double against Cardinals ace Adam Wainwright in the fifth inning and then another off reliever Fernando Salas in the seventh.

“We want to be able to string hits together where you get a guy on, you hit a double and you get him in,” Gibson said. “If you play baseball that way, you’re going to score the runs, you’re going to succeed and it’s going to help you win ball games.”

Prado’s style of play facilitates a facet of the game that the organization did not concentrate on in recent years.

“It’s an element that we want to have that I don’t think we’ve had in the past, we’ve been more reliable on the home run, we still want to hit home runs, don’t get me wrong, but we also want to put longer at-bats together.”

If the franchise can stick to the style play shown Monday, Gibson thinks it could only bring about better results than the third place finish his team posted in 2012.

“We may not win them all, but if we play the game right we’ll win more than we did last year and put ourselves in a position to get into a championship situation,” he said.

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