"Unbelievable," Encarnacion said. "Now I can make the rules."

Encarnacion is only 26, but, while he owns tenure, he is far from content with his game last year. And he is a man with a plan for 2009 after hitting a career-best 26 home runs last year, but driving in only 68 runs and hitting .251.

He admits he was Homer Happy - and it has nothing to do with Homer Bailey.

"I tried to pull the ball too much last year, tried to hit too many homers," he said. "That's why my average was down. I'll try to be more consistent with my hitting.

"I know I can do it because I did it before," he said, referring to 2007 when he hit only 16 homers but drove in 76 runs and hit .281.

"I know I can hit better than last year and I just have to keep working," he added. "Sometimes I tried to hit the ball too hard.

"Sometimes your mind goes crazy and that's why you have to be smart in this game. You have to go with a plan for hitting, and I plan to go up the middle more."

And how about the 23 errors last year?

"That's one of the things I worked hard on in my offseason - my throwing," he said. "I catch everything, but sometimes I throw it away. The first thing to win games is to play good defense. If you don't play good defense, you don't win games."

Manager Dusty Baker is all ears and he'll be all eyes watching his talented but enigmatic third baseman.

"I'll buy that," Baker said. "We've talked about that. Maybe he understands it now. The Edwin I knew was a right-center guy who can pull.

"To be a pull hitter, boy, you have to be perfect all the time with your swing and you're actually cutting your territory down," Baker added. "It's like using a slice of the pie instead of the whole pie. And they start defensing you easier."

Baker said he knows what it is like at this point in a career, "because I did it, too, for a couple of years. I got a letter once from (former major-league pitcher) Joe Black and he told me, 'Remember, you are a hitter, not a slugger.' Never forgot it."

And he hopes Encarnacion doesn't forget it.

"It happens to a lot of people," he said. "I call it home run-itis. You start liking the trot and then you end up hitting lower with less RBIs."