PHOENIX — Maybe Arizona Diamondbacks Chief Baseball Officer Tony La Russa said it best when discussing Paul Goldschmidt’s recent skid.
“Even Sinatra had to clear his throat now and then,” La Russa told Diamondbacks manager Chip Hale.
Ol’ Sedona Red Eyes is back.
Goldschmidt broke out of a 3-for-27 slide with three hits, including two doubles, a walk and an RBI in a 4-3, 10-inning victory over the Cincinnati Reds on Sunday after working through some mechanical issues with hitting coach Turner Ward and assistant hitting coach Mark Grace.
Goldschmidt improved his batting average to .337 and regained the NL batting lead over Washington right fielder Bryce Harper (.335), who passed Goldschmidt after Saturday’s games.
“You’re always working on stuff to get your swing right,” Goldschmidt said. “Nothing too crazy. It’s good to get a few hits today. That’s how baseball is. Sometimes you have some bad days or weeks or months or years or whatever. It kind of comes and goes. I felt fine. Just wasn’t getting the results. Good pitches to hit that I missed.
“We have high expectations for ourselves, but you also understand there is a lot of failure in this game. That’s part of it. You are not going to come through every time.”
Goldschmidt’s string of successes — second in the NL MVP voting in 2013, All-Star appearances the last three years — can lead to outsized expectations, Hale noted, even among his peer group, the one who know exactly how difficult sustained excellence can be.
“The great hitters … the fans, the media, even the coaches just assume they are going to come to the park every day and be these monsters, and it just doesn’t happen that way,” Hale said. “It is just too hard to maintain that. The other team definitely has something to do with it, with the way they are pitching him.
“Everybody has their own little intricacies with their setup and different things in their swing, and Turner has been working with some different things. That’s with every hitter. Hitters are constantly tweaking their swings, and ‘Goldy’ is no different. The pitchers throwing their pitches and they are executing very well against him right now, but we’ve seen them execute very well all season and him be able to handle those pitches.”