Delino DeShields admits daydreaming at times in the outfield

Young Texas Rangers center fielder Delino DeShields participated in a podcast for the Dallas Morning News and was wonderfully honest in revealing one of the parts of the game he needs to work on in spring training and during his second year in the big leagues next season.

DeShields acknowledged he sometimes has trouble staying focused on each pitch when he is playing in the outfield and can find himself daydreaming if he’s not careful. Kudos to DeShields for being willing to talk about it. Let’s face it, you don’t get that kind of honesty all the time from players.

[Hot Stove Digest: Mike Matheny agitated by Jason Heyward comments]

The baseball season is a grind and games can sometimes last more than three or even four hours. This kind of thing probably happens quite a bit.

DeShields played in the outfield in high school but after being drafted in the first round in 2010 by Houston, he made the switch to second base. He played there during his first three full seasons as a professional but began working on a transition to the outfield in the Arizona Fall League in 2013.

He played 113 games in the outfield during his rookie season this year and one game at second base. He committed six errors and had a .977 fielding percentage in 926 2/3 innings in the outfield this season and hopes to improve on that moving forward.

“When you’re in the infield, especially the middle infield, you’re the captain of everything, you always got to pay attention to the pitches, and that’s something I got really used to,” DeShields told the Morning News. “Then, going to the outfield – I’d daze out sometimes. So, that’s something that I’m going to get better at, try to be locked in every pitch…getting better reads, taking better routes, and doing all that stuff to be a more efficient outfielder.”

[This Seattle Mariners video will get you in the holiday spirit]

DeShields doesn’t hit for a lot of power but he stole 25 bases as a rookie and showed signs of potentially developing into a weapon at the top of the Rangers’ order if he can earn more walks and cut down on his strikeouts. He scored 83 runs and had 111 hits in 492 plate appearances.

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Kyle Ringo is a contributing writer to Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @KyleRingo