Larry Jewell

3, 2, 1, you're in the championship series. There's something special about that. There sure is. It's been a different feeling amongst the guys. Championship series is a lot different. And, you know, we're stepping up. We had two great games in Chico, had a chance, probably more of a chance to win the second or the first one than we did the game. We won. Had a lot of chances, but the guys played hard. And that's really all you can ask to go up there and get a split and come back here and have a chance to win two or three of home to win it. We're right where we want to be. I gotta ask you, it seems to me like on those semifinals, Northern, Southern, that there's a lot more strong intensity and it's almost like it's a blessing for both teams to be in the championship. You know, it almost seems like that there's probably a little bit more nervousness. At least there was in probably game one, game two of this championship series. It's probably gone a little bit, but I think now it's just go out and play and, you know, hopefully there's not a. There's no complacency because that's the last thing you need. But the Yuma series was huge. One of the reasons was Yuma came out so pumped up, and I thought I was back in college coaching at Dixie State, the way that the other team was acting with Yuma, and we went down there and it kind of gave us a little bit more incentive to win. This is a little bit more laid back. Just go out and play and see how you do. Let's talk about game number one. I'm going to ask you about these first two games. That one ended up in extra innings and you came very close to winning that. You know, we had chances all throughout the game. It won 11 innings and, you know, we hit a lot of balls hard, as did they. And there was a lot of great defensive plays made in those. In that first game, Yoshimunu Wakita came in and did an incredible job and gave us six innings of well pitched baseball, or five or six. Montgomery for them, came in and did the same thing. They matched each other pitch for pitch. And then Bennett came in on one day's rest after throwing four innings for Chico and got Heath to pop up. And it was just one of those games that you watch on TV late in October for Major League Baseball. It had that kind of intensity to it. You almost felt like, shoot, if you can get the leadoff guy on you're going to win this game. They end up getting a leadoff guy on in the 11th inning and wanted on a blue single to left field and ball skipped away from Joe a little bit, made a good throw to home and they end up, I think it was Scott ended up sliding in safe. Nothing more you can ask. Just to play hard and have a chance to win them at the end of the games. And we were in the similar situation in game two. Chico had a lot of chances. They hit a lot of balls hard. We turned two or three key double plays. We hit a lot of balls hard right at them. And I would have never guessed that we would have had a 10 game up at Chico to win it. So I'm pleased to get out of there with the split and come here and try to give it our all and see what we can do. Let me go back to that first game a little bit. Borges, their pitcher, seems like you hit him better early and then he settles in against you guys. You know, I think all of their starting pitching is just great. I mean, they're going to come right at you. Zipster did a great job in game two, Just was really incredible. And Niebla actually started the first game for them, the left hander, but, you know, he was. He could not, could not throw his fastball over the plate for the first five innings. But what he did a good job of, and you know, he's a veteran pitcher, he would throw his curveball when he was behind and he would throw his fastball just to entice you a little bit out of the zone. But he really settled down and just started nitpicking a little bit at us and coming in on us throwing the ball in and did a great job. We didn't capitalize as much as I thought we should have in the first couple innings. We leave Rod on second base in the third inning, we don't move. He was on with. He drove in, I believe it was. Tim didn't. And we left him out there, you know, with 6, 7, 8 coming up. Couldn't get him over to third and couldn't drive him in. So that was, I think, a key. It was 5, 0 at the time. And a key hit there gives us a 6 0. You know, believe it or not, 60 seems a little bit farther than the 5, 0. More than one run. But I think the key to their game was obviously Montgomery and Bennett coming in and shutting them down. And Niebulla really settled down and did a good job. We'll see Borgia Saturday night, which is they consider their best guy. You know, I think they've got four best guys as starters. I don't think any one of them is less than the other ones and that's why they're so tough. Let's talk a little bit about last night again or two nights ago, your last game up there. Mike Smith, that was just an amazing piece of pitching and he can do it. You know, he was in jam, he didn't have his best stuff, believe it or not, but he just kept battling, battling, you know, I don't think he was getting consistently the low strike call, but he just battled through it. He pitched through the umpiring and just time after time after time got a key pop up, got a key double play and even go to the, you know, I walked out there in, I think the eighth inning when he, when Ray Brown was up and had all intentions of bringing Matt Ruble in to face the left hander. And I walked out and I said, smitty, how do you feel? And he just said, I'm feeling great. And so it told me right then that I better leave him in because he's probably not going to leave anyway if I take him out. And so we left him in and you know, Heath said, who was catching him, said he looks good. And so those two together kind of told me that, you know, let's leave him in and it ended up working out for us. But he just, he's a bulldog. He threw about 120 pitches and gave us exactly what we needed. That first batter in the ninth inning lines a single off his ankle. Yeah, I think what Mike was actually trying to do is Freddy was playing him up the middle and I think he was actually trying to pull his glove back to let Freddy just catch the ball and, you know, pulled it back at the wrong time, hit his ankle and kind of skid it through. But then he comes back and gets just a key ground ball. We thought they were going to bunt. You know, they went away from what you would do statistically, which is fine. I mean, sometimes you have to do that. We made some of those moves the last couple games that could easily be second guessed, but that's, you know, that's kind of what we've done all year and that's what we stayed with. They were trying to go for the kill. They didn't want to go extra innings, they wanted to win it in the 9th and so they didn't bunt. And we were fortunate because we got a Double play out of Clark. And again, if he leaves, if Mike leaves the ball right over the middle of the plate, you know, it might be a double, but it makes a good pitch and we turn it up the middle. I know in game one up there, there seemed to be some defensive problems that you ran into, which is unusual for your team. Well, we had four errors, but really they were kind of cheap errors. They weren't feel it and throw it away type errors. They were, you know, a ball skipping away from a guy here and Freddy, the ball gets kicked out of his glove on a tag. Errors like that, which, you know, to me are just part of the game, we didn't really throw it around. I thought we played actually two great defensive games. The four errors were kind of. I don't think the four errors really cost us anything except for maybe the pickoff, the first third pickoff with Brian Mazone, who let a run in. But I almost thought the game was 54 when Brian Mazone came in, when I brought him in and we actually called that play, you know, I told him to do it. In fact, Rod McCall says, we might throw it away here. And I said, well, if we feel. If we don't feel comfortable doing it, let's not do it. If you do, let's do it anyway. Rod called it and the ball got away from him and they tied it up. But I almost felt better with one out and a man of first than I did and that scored, now tied than I did with being down them down around first, third, because it seems like there was less pressure on us just to go on Brian, just to go in there, throw it. And so we ended up getting out of it just one run, second night. Defensively, you made some great plays and some tremendous plays when you needed them. We did. You know what? They made more plays than we did. They dove in left, they dove in center, they dove at third. In fact, Dirkak's been playing great at third base. Been making plays that, you know, you usually just don't see short hops and dives to his right. And we made some great plays, too. We played great defense. Rod's had a lot of picks over there. Brian's played an excellent second base. They've been those kind of plays that are a little bit more difficult than your average play, that if you're not quite up to par, you're not going to make those plays. And Brian's made every single one of those plays. And obviously Freddy's had an incredible series both at Yuma and here With Chico at shortstop, and we're running down everything in the outfield, so just playing great defense all the way around. We'll be back. Talk about tonight's ball game after this timeout. 3, 2, 1. Manager Mike Littlewood. Now, you got to be home. Have to handle it from here on. That's right. You know, last road trip of the year, and it was pretty successful. Looking at our past experiences up at Chico, to go in there and just literally gut it out and get a win up there and, you know, now being at home is, again, what we. If you were to say, if you can win the championship series, only having to win two or three at home, would you want to do that? You know, I think everybody in our clubhouse would say, most definitely. So we're in the situation we want to be in. It's just a matter now of going out and getting the job done. Let's talk about this matchup tonight as Chico and the Zion Pioneers go head to head. You've had some interesting matchups here in this ballpark. Yeah, we have. And, you know, really, the couple times we play them and Go Zips are through against us, we score eight runs and then we end up losing it. We score eight in the first couple innings. When Jeff Garve came in, the wind was blowing about 70 miles an hour out, and they score 11 runs in one inning. And we've also had some close ones. I don't expect a 10 game nor anything close to that. Hopefully our guys will just go in and stay with our line drive swings at the that we had at Chico and Yuma and not try to lift the ball out of here. That's when we get in trouble. And to be honest with you, it sometimes plays an important part how the other team swings it. When the other team sees the short fences and they even look shorter because they're 12ft tall and 20ft in center, it makes them look even closer. And so guys think all I need to do is lift the ball and it's going to jump out of here, when in actuality you have to hit the ball decent to get out of here. You know what? Most definitely don't have to just turn on it and hit a big line drive, but you do have to hit it decent to get out of here. Hopefully that will work to our advantage. You made mention about hitting the line drives. When your team, so far, they have plenty of power and when they hit the line drives, they do carry. Yeah, definitely. You know, Robert Miro, when the game was at Yuma, the game was tied 55 and hits the gap in right center with a line drive. Those are the type of swings we need. Rod McCall's been swinging the bat very well lately, and what I like from him and BP was he's hitting line drives the other way and not just trying to jack him to right field. And I think everybody understands what we need to get this thing done here. And it's basically going to be put three or four hits together, you know, get Kalyn and Joe on a little bit for us and play defense and, you know, whoever plays the best is going to win. Right now, I don't think one team's a lot better than the other. Let's talk about pitching tonight. Who do you go with? Well, you know, it's interesting. We're going with Brian Mazzone and he's well rested. He threw one inning up there. And to me, I like the matchup right now. I think with all their left handers, I think Brian might be able to neutralize those guys a little bit. All Brian needs to do is go in with a bulldog attitude. If they're going to hit the ball out of the park or hit, you know, seven consecutive hits off him, whatever, that's fine. I want Brian just to go in and be real aggressive pitch like he has all year long. And he's the guy we would want on the mound right now. It's just that there's no doubt about it. He's been there for us all year and so we want him tonight. We've got Jeremy Thomas in the pen that's real fresh. Hasn't thrown a whole lot, one inning in the first series, and so he's fresh. And all our left handers are ready to go, plus Mark Pichoda, our closer, is ready. So pitching sets up real well for us right now. And I just hope Brian goes out with the bulldog attitude that he's had all year and gets it done for us tonight. We were talking about how many pitchers that you have are available right now. How. This may be too much of a leading question. Mike Smith gives you a complete game. How much does that help the rest of your staff? Oh, most definitely it helps. One thing it does is doesn't let Chico see too many arms from our bullpen. They haven't seen any of our left handers in a long time, month and a half, which is, you know, it's probably a little bit of an advantage. The downside of that is we've got a lot of guys in the pen who haven't been throwing in games a whole lot. The only time we really got them some work is when we were down 10 runs against Yuma here. And that's, you know, that's kind of mop up work where you're really not going out there having to get guys out. You're just kind of getting your work in. So, you know, I like our chances. I really do. I like, like the way our pitching is lining up. Nate Yeske's throwing real well right now and Yoshi's going to be ready again probably tonight for sure tomorrow. So, you know, I like our chances. Let's talk about the rest of the lineup. One of the things that's happened in this is you're staying with one catcher. Yeah. You know, Heath has been, in a way, I feel bad for Chris Brionis because he's helped us get here. He's been a huge part of us, of our success this year. But when you have a catcher like Heath and his defensive abilities, you almost, you have to, you have to just go with him. He got us a key out when they tried to bunt and he threw Ruiz out at second base on a throw behind. And it's interesting just to go back a little bit. He kind of foresaw that a little bit. Because when I went out there to talk to Mike, I said, mike, when they got the first two guys on and I think it was Cooper or Scott, one of the guys, it was Scott who banged the ball at the plate to get their second consecutive guy on in like the sixth or seventh inning, seventh inning. And I walked out and I said, mike, something good's going to happen for us right here. They're not going to get a blue pit or a line drive or something they usually do here. We're going to get an out. And he says, yeah, when they try to bunt, let's try to backdoor him. He said to Freddy and you know, he throws a bullet down to second base and, you know, I'm not sure there's another catcher in our league, let alone on our team that could do that. So, you know, I think you have to just go with your best defensive guy right now. And there's no secret that Heath is a great defensive catcher and a big reason that we won that game too. I gotta ask you, you're coaching, you're managing in this situation now that you're here, and I know you've had a lot of great experiences, but this is new in this situation, what's your reaction? You know, believe it or Not. I just. There's a certain calmness to me. I feel actually pretty calm as far as, you know, I don't feel like it's life or death if we have to win thing. Obviously, like I told Andy the other day, we need to, you know, I want to win this because we put four months of our lives into this thing for 95 games and I think the guys deserve it and why not try to win it while you're here? But I've got it in perspective. It's not life or death if we win or lose it. And I think that's the way we have to approach it as far as the guys that take the field also, we just had to approach it as another game that has probably a little bit higher implications. But, you know, nobody's going to remember 10 years from now if I won as a manager the Western League Championship. It's just not going to happen unless they look in that little book we've got, you know, so it's semi a pride thing. But I want it for the 21 guys that have been with us for four months that have just been working hard and Randy and all the other guys and you know, for Pat and Dennis who's here today. Those are the guys I want it for. And I think, you know, they deserve it because they've been working hard and putting sweat and blood into this thing and literally blood and a lot of torn up body parts for two more games, maybe three. The key tonight, there's no doubt it's going to be Brian Mazzone. His ability to go out there and go right at hitters, establish his strike zone as far as fastball first and then work off that and throw his off speed pitches for strikes. The way he's thrown 99% of the games this year, he needs to go out and do the same thing. And then us putting the ball in play. I don't see why we wouldn't score a few runs and then again play good defense and just kind of go out and play the way we have all the time. But there's no doubt the key is going to be Brian Mazzone. Manager Mike Littlewood. Thank you for being with us. Good luck tonight. Great to have you back, Larry. I appreciate it and good luck tonight. 3, 2, 1. Zion Pioneers manager Mike Littlewood. You got to win last night. Just when you needed it. We did. It didn't look good early, but you know, the thing about that game is when I went out and talked to Brian Mazzone in the. I think it might have been the third inning. We were down 6 0, and he was in a little bit more trouble. And, you know, I told him, I said, you hold them right here or close to here, we're going to win this game. I just had a. I had a good feeling about it. I felt like we were going to put up some runs. I didn't know that we were going to put up 14. Obviously, I thought if we scored eight or nine, that would be enough to win. And, you know, we did a great job coming back. I think the attitude in the dugout was such that we just never gave up and really felt like if we just keep picking away, get a run here, get a run there, pretty soon, you know, we get within three runs and anything can happen in one inning at this park with a 3, 4 run lead. They showed that. We showed that. So it was an exciting game. I gotta ask you before we go on to some other things. They score in two innings, you score in all the two innings. That was an interesting matchup. Well, and I think that was real key for us because we fall down six zero, and we get one and one and one, and then we get shut out and then we get one and, you know, then we jump on it for seven. Now, what was interesting about that game is there's 25 runs scored and only three home runs. Both teams really hit the ball and both teams play pretty good defense. It was just one of those games where there's a lot of momentum swings. And we just came out on top going into that one. Obviously, when you're suddenly down six nothing, that didn't look like it was going to be that big an inning, but you're suddenly down six nothing. What were your thoughts at that point? Well, I thought the Kiat bat was Aronson getting the double down the line. Aronson's a guy that we should be able to really pitch to, pitch well to, and he's going to put it in play and hit it hard a lot of times. But I think the key there was he's sitting dead, red fastball. We throw him a fastball, first pitch in a not a very good spot, and, you know, he hits a double down the line. And I think that kind of deflated us a little bit. But then on our offensive side, we put the pressure on them every single inning. And. And that was key for us. It seemed to really pay off because we weren't just going down. 1, 2, 3. 1, 2, 3. Estes was having to throw some pitches, and it proved Costly when they had to pull him. And Bennett wasn't ready for him last night and Montgomery was tired, you could tell that that wasn't the same Montgomery that we saw up in Chico. He was probably two or three, maybe even four miles an hour short on his fastball. And his braking stuff wasn't biting like it was similar to Yoshi, who came in and kind of was the same way. So, you know, I think both teams are in similar situations tonight with bullpens and their starting pitchers. Borges is going to be real tough tonight. You faced him before. You hit him well early, and then he gets tougher midway through the game. Well, I think any quality pitcher, if you just let him hang around and he struggles early, if you let him hang around and he gets to see a couple times, you know, he's probably going to get stronger if you don't keep putting the pressure on him and chase him. Niebla did that to us in game one. We scored four on him in the first and one on him in the third and have a chance to put up some more runs in the third in game one and don't do it. And he just shuts us right down for three or four innings. And good pitchers are going to do that. I think Brian Mazzone did that last night. He settled down and started thinking, you know, shoot, if I throw this fastball on the outside corner and get ahead or throw a breaking pitch for strike one, it's a much easier game. And he started doing that and he was real effective until he got a little bit tired. He threw a lot of pitches last night. If he would have been in the 90s, I would have left him in, but he was in 110, 15 range and he was just getting a little tired. But I was proud of Brian. He really gutted it up. I really was just running out of gas. You could only have so much. It was. And I went out there and told him, I want you to get Downing lefty, lefty. And then we'll see what happens from then. And Downing took a pretty good swing, got a lion drive to left that we caught. We made the switch and, you know, it was. Didn't work out the best on the switch, but we ended up winning the game. That's the number one thing I've got to ask you. You're in a situation, you're an 1111 tie, and all of a sudden you have the bases loaded, then the first run scores. What were your thoughts at that point? Is that going to be enough? No, definitely not. My thought was, let's try to get as many as we can. That's why I didn't bunt Robert mero on the first pitch. It's 11:11, you know, and I didn't think one run. I didn't feel comfortable with one run lead. I thought definitely four or five is going to be better than one. And Robert has a great at bat. I thought, well, okay, strike one. Let's try to bunt him on the next pitch just to get him over, because we're sure to get one instead of having him hit in double play. That's the worst thing that could have happened. Strike two. And then he really battles for a walk and Tim comes up with a big hit. So it worked out for us. And Charlie did the same thing. Charlie Kirfeld, Chico's manager, did the same thing in game two. He decided not to bunt in the ninth inning and they hit a ground ball, double play. But he was going for the win. He didn't want to go extra innings and use more of his bullpen and kind of looking down the line. He's a great manager and, and it didn't work out for him. But that's, you know, that's part of the game. And those are the decisions you have to make sometimes in a game. Let's talk about your closer. Pijota comes in and struggles a little bit with his control right off the bat. Then he gets three strikeouts. Well, what was great about, I think the key pitch probably in the game might have been Cooper's full count, strike three, that he swung at a slider down and away. Usually he won't do that. Usually he's going to be real patient, not swing at too many bad pitches. But that was real key. What I'm excited about now is that Mark Pushiotta came in and he did struggle and he's been struggling a little bit with his control. But the last three batters, and especially Ruhr's the last batter, really proved to me that maybe he's back on his game and going in there and being aggressive. That looked like the prosciutto that was here 95% of the time before this last week or two. So I'm excited about him and I think we all have confidence in Mark coming in the game, if we even have a one run lead here and shutting it down for Mark. Maybe his biggest struggle coming into the early in the season anyway was against Chico. He had a little struggle up there at one time. Yeah, he gave up one run and the one Run was kind of on a blue pit and he was pretty upset about that. But Chico's a good team. They're going to put the ball in play. And he had three strikeouts last night, which was. Which was obviously key. But they're going to have. They've got guys like Brad Gennaro who's hurt and can't throw, but yet comes up with a big three run home run off Yoshi. They've got those guys all the way through their lineup and you know, you have guys like that and you're always in the ball game. They don't strike out a whole lot and they're pretty patient at the plate, so it makes them a pretty tough team to pitch to. We'll be back. We'll talk about today's game and the schedule of this and what to look forward to after this timeout. 3, 2, 1. Manager Mike Littlewood. I know this is a little bit different situation here in St. George to play this early in the afternoon. It is. And you know, usually you look at September 15th and it's going to be in the low 90s right around there and it's probably 105 right now. It feels like it. But we've got misters in our dugout and considering the implications of this game, I don't think anybody's going to be worried about the heat. One nice thing is we've got Jeremy Thomas, who I purposely tried to keep on the side and not use him a whole lot, one inning in both playoff series because I know that he's probably going to have to come in and throw four or five innings. And if it's today, he's going to probably welcome the rest he's had over the last week and a half. But, but that's kind of. I think our ace in the hole right now is Jeremy being able to come in well rested in the role that he really loves coming off the bench in a game that we really need. And we've got Pushouta there and basically all of our left handers ready to go. So I feel really good about our pitching situation. It's going to be a matter of putting us putting the ball in play and swinging it and keeping them to five, six runs. And I think that's probably going to be the key. You mentioned left handers. You have plenty of left handers. This is kind of a left handed, dominated hitting team. Yeah, there's no doubt. They've got Scott, who's a switch hitter, and they've got Dirkak who's a Switch hitter. And so you throw a right hander up there and they've got seven guys who hit left handed. And so a left hander is probably pretty effective against them. But anytime, I think Nate, yes, he's going to be fairly effective against him tonight. All he's got to do is hit, split. And if we need a left hander to go in against a lefty, then we can do that three times with our three left handers in the pen all well rested. It's just a matter of those guys coming in, throwing strikes and doing their job, getting the guy out. Let's go to Nate, your starter tonight. Let's talk about the strength that he's shown for you since he's been with you. You know, he really has. We started him off real slow. We had him at about a 50 pitch count his first couple outings. He just kept on continually getting more and more depth in his innings. Worked probably 110 pitches last outing. So, you know, he's well conditioned too. He's in good shape. I don't think the Heat, he's from Vegas. I don't think the Heat's going to bother him very much. This is kind of what he's used to. And so, you know, I look for him to have another strong outing. I don't look for a complete game or anything like that. But, you know, if he can get us deep into the game and have a chance to win when he leaves, that's all he has to do. And from there we'll go to our pen and see what happens. He's an interesting character. He doesn't say a whole bunch unless he really wants to. He's kind of quiet and very serious out there. He is. Nate's a thinker too. I mean, he's kind of a student of baseball. There's some guys that are and some guys that aren't. He definitely is. You know, he's always talking about different hitters. He probably knows the hitters better than anybody else. And he's played with a couple of these guys. I think he played with McNabb. So he understands what's happening and knows how to pitch. And so you kind of, from a managerial standpoint, I'm excited to send a guy out there like that with a couple years double A experience who's been around and knows how to pitch and he's going to handle himself. Well, I've got to ask you, Championship series, you end up losing in extra innings by one run. You have a one nothing victory and then last night, it's 14 11. There is a variety in every one of these ball games. There sure has been. And I don't know if it's maybe the atmosphere that was at Chico knowing that. Boy, you really have to hit it hard to get it out of this park or, you know, to hit a gap or whatever, because there's only three home runs here. I mean, in last night's game, that's not a lot of home runs. I mean, it's more than we had there. But I think here we just. We really hit the ball well. We hit a lot of line drives and as well as they did. And you talk about the type of game we had last night, we lose that game if Rod McCall doesn't make that play at first base. The diving play with bases loaded against Ray Brown with two outs, and I think it was in the third inning. That ball gets down the line and the game's all of a sudden nine zero, and we're out of it. You can't, you know, it's tough to come back from 9 0. It's not impossible, but, you know, so a lot of credit's got to be given to Rod. He's turned it up not only one notch, but two or three notches in this playoff series. And, you know, he doesn't make that play. We lose that game last night. So not only putting up 14 runs, but also playing great defense is what is really. Brian Greyback makes a great play and Freddy's been playing great at short. Those are the type of plays that are going to win games for you. Everybody was intense, obviously, but that one play by Rod McCall made everybody another step intense. There was no question the defense was there. You know, it's talk about momentum, and you think of momentum being kind of a football term or a basketball term where you're going to score points off your defense and put the press on and steal it and make a layup. That's kind of what baseball's like, too. Baseball is a huge momentum sport, and we kind of rode that play into a run here and a run there and just kept building on it. Conversely, if he doesn't make the play, we probably get real down and guys go up to the plate thinking, got to score nine. It's a different feeling than having to score five or six in this park where a couple base hits a double. Now you're kind of back in the game. So you don't like to feel like that when you're on defense, but it sure is nice on offense when you know you have a chance to win. We talked about some of the keys for this ball game, but if you were to say, okay, I'm going to point at the key or key or two, what will it take for the Pioneers to win outside of just scoring more runs? Well, you know, obviously it starts on the mound. I think the key is probably going to be Nate Yeske going out there and I really think, I've felt this in the back of my mind the whole time that I think probably the biggest key of all is going to be J.T. jeremy Thomas coming out of the pen and his ability to maybe throw two or three real quality innings for us and have Mark maybe shut these guys down. That's probably the biggest key of all because you know, I have confidence in our lineup that we're going to get our first couple guys on and you know, it changes our lineup so much or the outlook on our batting order when Caitlin gets on and Joe gets on because they can just run at any time. So those guys getting on like they did last night is another big key for us where Robert now can just feel like he's got to just hit a single and he's going to get a couple runs out of it. So, you know, both those things with Nate and getting our quick guys on I think, I think is huge. Freddy Diaz has been another big key for us coming up with two outs and getting singles to score runs. And he's been doing, he's a clutch hitter, been doing it all year and you look for him to almost just do that every single night. He does seem to get key hits and is not, how can I say, isn't that flashy with him. But he always seems to have key RBIs. Key hits for you. Yeah, you know, it seems like Freddy knows when he has to hit, you know, and he'll just turn it up a little bit and just think, alright, this is one at bat where I actually have to get a hit right here. I can't afford to fly out or ground out. And 80% of the time when he has to get a hit, he's going to do it. And so believe it or not, even though he hits nine, I mean that's an important spot in our lineup with him going up there and just knowing if you have two outs and your nine hitters coming up, I'd love to have Freddy up anytime. Michael Edward, this has been very, it's been fun to get back doing this and thank you for being with us. Best of luck tonight. Thanks a lot. Larry.