Bruce Boudreau

I think the defense is more important to pitching than we imagine.

I mean, the pitching is there, the arms are there.

We've got Max Scherzer trying to get his 55 innings so he can start getting those million-dollar bonuses every 10 innings.

But I would bet against that at this point.

But, you know, you look at the defense and the outfield defense, that isn't anywhere close to where it's been.

And they've made 35 errors in 56 games.

But it's not always the errors.

You look at Johendrik Pignango, and he doesn't have an error.

And if you've been watching games, you'd go, oh, this guy's got at least four or five.

And it hasn't happened.

They're called doubles.

And, yeah, they need to step up the defense in order to make their pitching effective.

No, it happens a lot in baseball, especially now with the automatic challenge system where they're all pent up frustration-wise because they can't challenge pitches anymore because the hitter can do that.

So, yeah, no, it's been very common over the years.

And with my experience in top level as a manager in Ontario baseball, that's my calling card right there, just getting on players.

Well, in the first three weeks of the season, the American League East, which traditionally has been the strongest division in all of baseball, was nine games under .500.

Now they've fought their way back very quietly to 13 games over .500 as a division.

But that's still far behind the NL Central.

The NL is 33 games better than the American League, which is...

outrageous because it hadn't been that way for at least five or six years.