Ross Atkins

Yeah, thanks for having me on, guys.

Good to be with you.

Yeah, I mean, as I talked about yesterday, ideally we would be in the driver's seat, which we are not.

So not where we set out to be at this point.

nearing the halfway point, but we do have a lot of confidence and belief in the group here, and we're seeing very good signs as we get to the tougher stretches of a season with some good depth behind the 26-man roster and some good stories from some younger players.

Happy to get Kirky back.

We'll be excited to get Barger back and

Shane's outing wasn't what we or he had hoped for yesterday, but have a reason to believe in him based on track record and arsenal and just ability to compete.

Not ideal from where we'd like to be on a win-loss perspective, but do feel like

we're in a strong position from a competitive standpoint.

I mean, there's a lot of different ways to think about that.

You're competing against a group where we don't have as low of a floor, and maybe some of the ceiling isn't there in the AL East that many have expected, but there's still a lot of talent in the American League, so a lot of things could correct.

I expect a lot of things to change and the end results to look different than they look today.

But what I am confident in is that we're in a strong position to be a positive aspect of those end results and feel like our best baseball is ahead of us.

Yeah, he says that that's a hot month for him, and it certainly has been.

I can't imagine really just being more impressed.

We expected that his offense was going to have a little bit different shape with the adjustments made to different arsenals and different weapons being attacked by pitchers he's never seen in his life.

And an entirely different league in different ballparks.

And, you know, defensively, we expected the transition to be a little bit smoother.

Having said that, he had been playing predominantly first base.