"When right fielder Justin Upton isn't in the lineup, the Diamondbacks feel it, and Upton has missed more games in his career than interim manager Kirk Gibson would like.

"We want him to play more games than that, and then it gets into, 'How do we keep him healthy?' " Gibson said. "This has happened three years in a row, and we've got to do some things differently, and a lot of that is up to him."

Upton has been sidelined in each of his three full seasons in the majors. He played 108 games in 2008 and 138 games in 2009, spending time on the disabled list both years because of injuries to his oblique. He hasn't been on the DL this year, but he has missed most of this month because of left-shoulder soreness, the result of a 4-year-old strain to his labrum.

"It's just something we look at, and we're going to try to do a better job at," Gibson said. "People don't realize how hard it is to play 150-plus games. It's really hard. There are so many little things that can go wrong. . . . He's still kind of young and has to learn how to manage that and stay on the field."

The Diamondbacks are 6-24 in games in which Upton doesn't start.

"He's very important," Gibson said. "He really influences what goes on.""