Ben Nicholson-Smith

And as a group, this is a team right now that's 24th in Major League Baseball in WRC plus.

So that is seventh, seventh from the bottom in Major League Baseball when it

Yeah, it's tough to win a lot of games.

This also contributes to how much pressure has been on the pitching staff.

Not only do they just have the three starters right now, but they also are playing a lot of close games.

So that puts their relievers in a lot of leverage.

And, you know, as we say this, it is kind of remarkable.

Like, I don't want to be too down on it because, hey, there's three games under 500, which they can overcome within a week, a good week.

And they're still very, very close to playoff position here as we're into June.

Yeah, no, that's for sure.

They are a long way away from that.

We can't talk about the division.

So it's wildcard push time, and that puts a lot of pressure on someone like Kevin Gosman.

Like, I think that that's a really...

know it's it's an insightful comment from him um to to honestly say like hey it feels like we haven't hit our stride it feels like we're still searching for that momentum but you think about where they'd be without kevin cosman and he was really hard on himself after that series opener in atlanta on tuesday where he said hey i've got to be better i can't allow these first inning runs i can't walk the leadoff hitter of course there's an element of truth to that but also the

being pretty hard on himself when he's like the one guy who's kind of holding this all together where if Patrick Corbin, Trey Savage or Kevin Gosman doesn't have a good outing that's five or six innings then there's just chaos for the pitching staff then there's more pressure on the offense to overcome a deficit so as much as Gosman was self-critical he's really kind of holding this together in a lot of ways.

Yeah, I think with Vlad Jr.

this season, it's important to acknowledge, and I think we've hopefully done that here on ATL, it's important to acknowledge that he is doing some things right, and getting gone base at a 390 clip is not easy, and it is significant, and it does help the Blue Jays.

At the same time, we know there's more in there.

And so he's getting paid $500 million.