Mark Shapiro

And like everybody else I mentioned, there's a good story there, right?

We're his third organization.

He was, you know, designated and kind of given up on by two teams, two major league teams before us, good teams, you know, in Cleveland and Chicago.

Oakland when he was in Oakland and came here, kind of went up and down in the minor leagues and embraced who he was.

And the floor for Ernie is that he's an elite defender and a very good base runner.

That's a really good floor.

And then he has started to bring his bat to ball skills, you know, in line with the other.

And that's that's a ceiling.

And he's been a guy that's come through with some clutch hits because he's

He can hit just about anywhere the ball is pitched.

You've seen him hit home runs on balls over his head.

You know, he can take a ball off the ground and hit that too.

So it's not conventional.

But the toughness piece, the commitment to playing hard, I think when we're at our best,

And Ernie's style of play is really what stands for who we are, which is every team knows they have to play their best to beat us.

I think about what are we at our best?

We execute defensively.

We run the bases well.

We're really, really tough outs up and down the lineup.

And so to beat us, it's not that we can't be beat, but to beat us, a team has to play their absolute best.