Thad Levine

It's actually a great question because there's so many things that we're trying to do where there may be a little bit, as you just illuminated, there may be a little bit of a gap between what we're intending to do and what we actually execute against.

So the intention there is to give the vote of confidence.

The intention is to dispel this notion that every time you're in front of the media, they have to ask you questions about the job security of your manager.

And ideally, you take the pressure off the manager and allow them to focus on the job at hand, which is winning that night's game.

But I think what you just said is absolutely right.

What happens in practice, though, is the minute we give that vote of confidence, and likewise, when an owner gives a vote of confidence about a general manager, you feel like that hot seat just got significantly hotter in that very moment.

Yeah.

So, Kevin, I don't know about from your career, but I always really I'm not trying to dodge the question, but I really tried to avoid making these types of decisions, especially this early in the season.

It was Billy Bean who shared this with me when I first got an opportunity to work in baseball.

He said, you look at the season in reality.

three two-month segments in the first two months be as patient as you possibly can really evaluate your team we don't get the chance to evaluate for a full season but surely take the first two months and see where you are after two months and then spend the next two months either doing one of two things pushing chips in to try to win right now or building for the future and then the last two months of the season you're either spending trying to get a step ahead for postseason planning because your team's building for the next year or you're trying to

to get a step ahead, building for the playoffs to try to make as deep a run as you can.

But when you start making moves of this magnitude, 27 games into the season, 29 games into the season, it's hard to really envision that you gave that team long enough time to gel.

I mean, you guys could say the same thing about the Toronto Blue Jays right now.

They were favored to make another deep playoff run this year, and they very well may end up doing that.

But you have so many guys on the aisle right now.

Is it really fair to assess them as a 14 and 17 team with that type of winning percentage?

Should you project that moving forward or should you expect the team to improve?

I have to believe other teams are looking at it through that lens.

So to answer your question more directly, when you make a move of this magnitude, I think you're hopeful that you're artificially going to spike