Craig Breslow

The ability to execute multiple pitches, you know, to sequence and tunnel and pitch to a game plan and really exploit hitters' weaknesses.

You know, we talk a ton, and Andrew talks a ton about making sure we lean into a pitcher's strengths, and Ranger is kind of one of the rare examples where his strength is the ability to exploit a hitter's weakness.

So we'll make sure to lean into that.

You know, in some ways, I think the parallel is like, you know, we talk about times through the order within a game, but then you also start to think about the number of times, like, you know, a lineup wouldn't be exposed to the same reliever in a series, right?

And so I think this idea of...

contrasting, say, Garrett and Ranger into very different styles of pitching could make for a really difficult time for a hitter.

I don't know that I would handicap in a particular way.

I felt like we were still going to do whatever we could to improve the team.

And I think that's the outcome that it's really important we work backwards from.

Because when you narrow the options, given that trades and free agency are so unpredictable, you're just cutting yourself off from possible paths to improvement.

So we work backwards from...

We need to put a better team on the field.

We need to win more games than we did last year.

How do we do that, right?

And offense was a fairly obvious one.

But preventing runs is another way.

I joke with Pete that hopefully we're making his job easier too, right, by not putting such demands on the offense.

But I think the most important takeaway here is just there are a number of different ways to make a team better.

And leaning into this one seems to be the one that makes sense for us right now.

I think probably similar in terms of managing contacts, Sunny, and a little bit more kind of strikeout.