Goldy feeling ‘normal,’ which is good
After taking three of four from the visiting Giants to open the season, you couldn’t help but notice a little bit of a swagger in the Diamondbacks’ clubhouse.
There was Chris Owings, giving grief to Jake Lamb about his bobblehead figure. There was David Peralta, showing off his new batch of bats to Zack Greinke. There was Tom Wilhelmsen, sarcastically wishing the Giants a nice flight out of town.
And there was Mr. Even Keel, Paul Goldschmidt, silently going about his business as usual.
Never mind the fact that Arizona’s first baseman was a raking machine during his team’s opening four-game series win, hitting .333 with two home runs. Forget the fact that in the same week, he not only moved into second place on the team’s all-time hit list, but that he also became just the fifth first baseman in major-league history to collect at least 100 home runs and 100 stolen bases.
“I can’t be more pleased with what he’s offered us at the plate, in the dugout, in the field,” manager Torey Lovullo said. “It’s an honor to be around him and to be in the same dugout as him.”
Ask Goldschmidt how he’s feeling at the plate and you’ll get the standard answer.
“The at-bats have been pretty good,” he said before Friday’s game against the Indians. “I feel fine – not like great or bad or anything – I just feel normal. I’m just trying to have good at-bats, swing at the right pitches, hit some balls hard. I’ve been able to do that. Got a couple of balls to fall in there, too.”
In just five short seasons, Goldschmidt has managed to quickly soar up multiple categories in the franchise record book and at 29, his best years might still be ahead of him. In addition to ranking second all-time in hits, he entered Friday’s game ranked second in Diamondbacks history in runs scored (502), RBIs (510), doubles (198), walks (474) and career batting average (.299), plus third in home runs (142) and steals (100).
Last season, Goldschmidt got off to an uncharacteristically slow start. It took him 18 games before he hit three homers and 43 games before he could get to 10. He was batting just .220 through May 8. Four games into 2017, however, it looks like he’s seeing the ball as well as ever.
Bauer Outage
Former Diamondbacks pitcher Trevor Bauer will face his former team for just the second time since he was dealt to Cleveland – and his start opposite Zack Greinke in Saturday’s game will be his first appearance back at Chase Field.
The return won’t hold any extra special meaning to the right-hander.
“It’s so far removed,” Bauer said. “All the guys that I played with when I was here, all the on-field staff, it’s all new. I think Goldy, (A.J.) Pollock, (Patrick) Corbin – I think that might be it. It’s a completely different team from the guys that I knew.”
Early in his major-league career, Bauer tended to rub people in the Diamondbacks’ organization the wrong way, whether it was manager Kirk Gibson, General Manager Kevin Towers or catcher Miguel Montero.
Asked on Friday if he wished things would have gone differently, Bauer said, “I don’t wish it one way or the other. It is what it is. It was handled the way it was handled on both sides. I was a 20-yearold, 21-year old kid. My first spring training was big-league camp. I was so new to everything in pro ball. It turned out the way it turned out. I don’t really wish anything in my past to be different. It’s part of who I am today. It affected me one way or the other, positive or negative, it’s just part of who I am.”
Bauer lost his biggest advocate in the organization when former VP of scouting and player development Jerry Dipoto left the Diamondbacks in October, 2011 to become general manager of the Angels. Had Dipoto stayed, might so have Bauer?
“I don’t know,” the pitcher said. “Jerry was the guy I interfaced with the most in the draft. He was the one I feel like I knew the most. So maybe. But it’s so hard to say.”
Mr. Excitement
One of baseball’s brightest young stars is in the Valley this weekend, and in shortstop Francisco Lindor, the Indians just might have the American League’s early season favorite to win Most Valuable Player honors.
“I think he’s one of the more exciting players in the American League and deservedly so,” Lovullo said of Lindor, who homered in his first at-bat Friday off Shelby Miller. “He’s a well-above average defender, he is a switch hitter that looks like he’s got a number of different ways he can beat you. And on top of that, he has fun playing baseball.
“There’s a lot of tools there, a lot of special tools there. But he’s not the only guy on that ball club that plays that type of baseball. They’ve done a great job of getting that talent, developing that talent and letting that talent be productive at the major-league level.”