Arizona Diamondbacks OF Mark Trumbo talks about his triples
Apr 8, 2015, 10:08 PM | Updated: 10:08 pm
The Arizona Diamondbacks thought they had a slugger in Mark Trumbo.
Instead, apparently, they have a speed demon.
Two games into the season, the D-backs’ outfielder leads the National League in triples, with two.
Trumbo tallied just one triple last season, and had seven in his career prior to this season.
Who needs home runs when you can leg out triples, right?
“The first one, I actually thought I killed, I thought it was no doubt (a home run), then it fell a little short. Don’t know what to blame it on,” Trumbo told Burns and Gambo on Arizona Sports 98.7 FM Wednesday. “But a triple is cool. I’ll take whatever I can get.”
Trumbo would not confess to being fast, saying that in certain ball parks — Chase Field and Colorado’s Coors Field, in particular — it’s easier to get a triple than it may seem.
“But if you’re not going hard out of the box I guess you’re never going to get it, so I guess that’s kind of my mind set,” he said. “It’s just haul ass and if we’ve got a chance to keep going, keep going.”
The triples are Trumbo’s only two hits in eight at-bats. He has scored once, driven in one and struck out twice. Obviously the expectation for the former Angel is to drive the ball out of the park, which he did 95 times from 2011 to 2013. Last season, his first in Arizona, he hit 14 home runs in 328 at-bats. It was the lowest long ball total of his big league career, and something he’s looking to bounce back from.
“I did have a lot of focus in the offseason on a few things, offensively, and a lot of it is trying to drive more balls in the air,” he said of his approach this year. “I don’t have the speed to kind of beat out those infield hits all the time and obviously grounding into double-plays and things like that aren’t productive, either.
“So for me, line drives and long fly balls and things like that are going to be real important for me as far as my game goes.”
