Ben Shulman

I kind of like the at-bats that I've seen from him so far.

I think he didn't have his best day in the finale of that twin series, but he's lining the ball a little bit more.

He's a guy with big power, and they do pay him to a certain extent to hit home runs, but I do like the contact that he's hitting on the line a little bit.

He's talked to me about kind of changing his sights from thinking pull side to thinking a little bit more up the middle.

He's so naturally pull side anyway that I think he can get a lot out of his bat by not having to exaggerate

rate that motion necessarily.

So I think that he's provided a lot.

You know, I don't know that they necessarily expected to be hitting him clean up or second as often as they have through the first two weeks of the season.

But he's held his own in that lineup.

And for a lot of the days where they weren't producing, it wasn't because of him.

He often was coming up with a hit or two or an extra base hit or something to help them kickstart a rally.

There's no substitute for the major league experience that Alejandro Kirk has unless you have the same experience.

I think that that's kind of invaluable in his relationships to pitchers.

I do think, like you said, that Valenzuela has called it pretty well, though.

So I think it's more correlation than causation.

I think with Eric Lauer specifically, I talked to him after his most recent start.

He's still sick.

And they don't want to make that excuse.

He's not going out there and using it as an excuse.

But he's just clearly not 100% right now.