LISTEN: Sveum On The Score

(WSCR) Just after the Cubs introduced new skipper Dale Sveum to the city of Chicago, Sveum jumped on with The McNeil and Spiegel Show to discuss his new gig.

Sveum harped on a new defensive strategy during his introductory press conference -- something he said can drastically change an entire baseball team.

"When you're not a good defensive team, your pitchers are going to throw another maybe thousand pitches in a year, compared to a really good defensive team," Sveum said. "That holds a lot of water when it comes to using your bullpen for the week. One error can cause a great bit of damage to your bullpen for a whole long week. The pitch counts are huge, and defense makes those pitch counts go down."

LISTEN: Dale Sveum on The McNeil and Spiegel Show

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As far as defensive miscues are concerned, Sveum isn't going to listen to excuses. He expects result, though his team ranked near the top of the league in errors in 2011.

"I think excuses are what they are," he said. "We know everybody is gong to make mistakes  -- we're humans. We're going to make mistakes. When you start using excuses as the reason why when everybody is on the same playing field, it's just a cop-out for some type of insecurity that the player is going through."

Sveum also said he had a chance to speak with Cubs All-Star Starlin Castro and he expects even bigger things from him in the future.

"I know he's a good kid," Sveum said. "I actually just met with him -- he's in town. I just talked to him for quite awhile. He's a great kid. Obviously, we know he can hit. He's a little raw defensively. With myself being an ex-infielder, and whoever I bring in as my infield coach, he's going to be tied down and get a lot of quality work in. I think a lot of times we forget just how young this kid is and how quickly he got to the big leagues."