Ross Atkins

But Mikey was just always the skilled player that you hated to face.

And that proved to be a really good pick for the Yankees and then went on to play for some other teams.

But, yeah, special family.

They're close to my heart as people and a big part of the fabric of my baseball evolution, too.

Yeah, I mean, I believe it wholeheartedly.

It's finding it and identifying it when they're not within your organization and acquiring.

Doing all of those things is just not quite as simple as one might think, and they're not growing on trees.

Mikey Lowell is...

was exceptionally talented.

You know, he'll probably be upset for me saying this, but an overachiever, um, you know, probably exceeded what, not what he expected to do, but certainly what almost all scouts in baseball expected him to do.

And not only did he do it as an individual, but went on to win a couple of world series, be an MVP in the world series.

And that just doesn't happen.

You know, that doesn't happen because right guy, right time.

That happens because of all the things you're talking about.

The, the,

the decision-making, the chemistry, the preparation, and then the work to put himself in good situations.

Yeah, I mean, I do think that it is harder and harder to beat teams to identifying things or opportunities because of the underlying information that essentially everyone has.

Not to say that certain teams don't have better information or more robust information to tap into, but you do see the underlying things where you don't have to have an army of scouts identifying and...

triangulating information in a way that's going to be able to suggest that maybe there's this hope that we can hang our hat on this.

There is a lot more.