Connor McKnight

You needed to guarantee the ability to pitch Grant Taylor, so opening was kind of the highest leverage you can guarantee.

You can't let that closer rust away, like Steve Stone likes to say all the time, and it's very true.

They want to get Grant 100 innings this year.

Period.

End of story.

However that happens, that's kind of the goal.

Chris Getz has talked about this out loud.

And what getting him 100 innings does is let your options for 2027 stay open.

If you want to start him, if that's where things go, he's got the innings base to do it.

That's critical.

in what this team and this franchise needs to become kind of going forward.

If you want to make him the nastiest, most fire-breathing reliever in the American League, you can do that too.

We've been, I think since 2015, 2016, the entire baseball has been going up.

Can you find your Andrew Miller, right?

I'm sure Miller was left-handed, but that's neither here nor there.

You guys know what I'm talking about.

Can you find your Andrew Miller, your two-inning shutdown guy that can go every other day because he's got a starting pitcher's base and the whole thing, right?

Can you find him?

It's been a decade, and we're still looking for him.

There's been a couple of guys that have taken that mantle throughout a playoff stretch or what have you.