Mark Shapiro

You're looking for signs that what our baseball operations group identified in each guy is still present, that the opportunities we thought for them to be even better are being utilized and those resources are being utilized.

But our jobs as an organization are just to put these guys in position to be successful.

You know, it's to to allow them to be in an environment where they can relax as much as humanly possible in a game that has so much anxiety built in and stress built in and expectations built in.

So to put them in an environment where they feel like they're supported and relaxed and to provide them with the best resources in all of Major League Baseball.

mentally physically and fundamentally to compete to prepare to recover information coaching everything else and so we're more focused on our part of that deal right now than we are on evaluating them i think we you try to withhold evaluations till the 40 game point and just look at are we doing everything possible to put these guys in a position to be the best they can be

I mean, Schneid set that tone with his talk when the guys first got into spring training, but I really feel it's veteran players.

Veteran players understand.

I mean, think about Max Scherzer and all that he's been through, how many world championships he's won, but how many times he's fallen short as well.

Our guys, I think, just basically understand that, you know, listen, it's...

They've got a long journey ahead.

It's not going to be easy.

Things are going to come up that no one is expecting or no one is prepared for at this moment.

And how we handle that adversity when it hits, how we handle that first six games in a row we lose skid, is more determinant of who we are as a team and how far we'll go than how we handle going 3-0 out of the blocks and kind of celebrating last year's championship.

So there's a big respect there.

for the schedule, which is the toughest one in all professional sports.

And there's a big respect for our division, which is the toughest division in Major League Baseball.

Yeah, I mean, he's authentic.

I think that's why, you know, it's easy to fall in love with him.

It's not an act.

Yeah.