Larry Jewell

3, 2, 1. Manager Mike Littlewood back in Scottsdale. And it feels warmer than St. George this time around. It does. It feels. It feels really humid. Usually you think about Arizona being pretty dry and a lot like St. George, but it feels pretty hot right now. We got to talk a little bit about that last ball game before your day off. There were at least a half a dozen interesting, unique things that happened in that ball game, no matter who was going to win that. Yeah. And, you know, the score was 8 to 4. Excuse me. And it seemed like it was about 20 to 4. And I don't know if that's because we didn't have a bullpen and everybody knew it, although our two position players that came in and threw did a. That have. Were almost more effective than anybody else has thrown the last couple days. So, you know, I just, I was a little bit disappointed that we scored three and then in the first, score one in the third and then sit on it for the rest of the game. You know, we were really short in our pen and pitching staffs just really short. And, you know, the days off really help right now. If we can get a nice outing out of Mike Smith tonight, that's really going to help us get our bullpen a little bit farther back. And Nate Yeske is going to be inserted into the rotation on Tuesday when we get home the second day. So our pitching staff will be. Will continue to get better and won't be so depleted the next week. We're home. But just one of those things in baseball that happens. Timing is weird sometimes. Now, interesting that both teams score in the first, both teams score in the third zeroes after that. Yeah. You know, and shoot, we almost just said, here's four runs for you. Go ahead and take them. Boot a ball at third. Missed a ball in left. Ended up turning a double into a home run for Gennaro. You know, we just booted around a little bit and looked very, very horrible defensively and pretty lethargic offensively. We had a little deal in dugout in the third or fourth or fourth inning that kind of took the life out of the dugout, you know, and just one of those things, one of the things that did take place, we were talking about this. These are maybe the two best defensive teams. They combine for five errors. And for you guys, the second five innings of the ball game, it looks like you're back in that defensive mode. We either need to put nine innings together or just choose which five innings we're going to play during a game because the Night before, you know, we have tremendous first five innings and then give it up and then we do the opposite. But you have to give credit to Heath Hayes and to DG Nelson, who ate up four important innings for us and both of them. I know his arm was really hanging before he even went in, but he just went in and battled for us and got us two innings and DG came in and got us two innings. DG was a tremendous pitcher in high school and he just reverted back to those days. But he's got a good arm. He, you know, this team is just. We're a little bit on cruise control and the only thing we need to do is keep playing hard. I don't think we can get into a lull where we just go out every single day and take it for granted. We still need to play hard every single day. Gotta go back to dg. He showed a pretty good curve ball and has a little pop to that fastball. Yeah, in high school I remember facing him when he played for Mountain View. I was coaching at Taylorsville and he had a real good. We thought it was a slider, more of a slider, but you know, nobody could hit it. The only way you get to DG is when he starts walking three or four in a row. But he had a lot of pop and had a good slider. And then he went to BYU and ended up being second baseman and catcher and you know, kind of an all around utility guy. Got to talk about one defensive play that was just eye popping. The double play on the line drive to left field and Joe Trippy gets the guy trying to get back to first base. Just a tremendous play. Yeah, both physically and mentally. I think most players, when the ball's hit there, you have guys on first and second. Most players that catch the ball like Joe did would immediately throw it to second base. He looked up, surveyed the situation and saw the guy at first, wasn't even close and went, threw it over second base and cleared a first base. That was a great play. We're a great defensive team. But Joe misplays a fly ball, just doesn't pick it up. Those things, sometimes they'll happen, but you know, 95% of the time we're going to make the plays and be a very good defensive team. Look at your record this year. Only once have you gone beyond back to back losses. That was that 17 game stretch. So this record says that you're probably going to come out fairly strong again today. Yeah, we've got nine position players today and you know they're all in the lineup. If somebody gets hurt or somebody has to come out, then a pitcher has to go in and fill one of the spots. Kalin folds. Looks like he may be out for a month, may be out for the year. He broke the orbital bone, the bone right under his eye socket, and we don't really know if he's going to be able to come back, if it's going to require surgery or if it's just going to take some time to heal. We just don't know when he's going to meet with the doctors on Wednesday back in St. George, so he's not with us. Rod McCall, I released after the game on Wednesday night, and that was what I was talking about, the little deal in dugout. And we've got an infielder going to meet us tomorrow, Ron Battle, who was in spring training with us last year. So we don't have any extra players right now, position players. So, you know, we're light there, but we're going to come out and play. We'll play hard. We got Hero DH in tonight, you know, and it's 4:30 to center. He's not going to, you know, he couldn't hit it out from second base in this park. So we'll have to just play a little bit, little ball, you know, hit and run and bunt and see if we can. Usually in this park, the games are low scoring anyway, so it doesn't hurt to have the line drive type guys in there. So we'll just play, play a little ball, try to hit and run a little bit and bunt and see what we can do. One of Hero's best hits came in this last series down here. Solid single to center field. Yeah, and what I liked about Hero is in the last game he played, he had a solid line drive to left field, really stayed on the ball. Well, he's going to do that. He's going to get overmatched once in a while with real good fastballs. But if he's looking for the pitch and it's in the right spot, he'll hit it. Ryan Grabeck was red hot and then all of a sudden everything tailed off right at the end of that last ball game. Yeah, and you know, you can't go 10 straight days getting two or three hits or even hitting the ball hard three or four times. That's just one of the things you have to deal with. And I'm sure he'll come back today. I've got him in a three hole with this lineup we have today. And so hopefully he'll, he'll be in situations where either he can bunt a couple guys ahead. I've got Joe Trippy leading off and Kendrick Wallace hitting second. So if those guys can get on, we can use Brian to bunt him along or hit and run or just let him swing it and let Bob Miro and DG and Heath try to drive him in. We'll be back and talk about tonight's game a little bit more about the opponent and about Mike Smith after this timeout. 3, 2, 1. Manager Mike Littlewood. If you look at the season long records between these two as they compile, it's just the opposite for Valley as it is for the pioneers. 19 and 32. You're 32 and 19. Yeah, they've had, they've been playing a little bit better lately. I think they've got a good lineup. They've got two or three ex major leaguers in their lineup, you know, and a guy on the mountainite, Michael Botter who we actually tried to sign the left hander did a pretty decent job against us last time here. But you know, I just, I just, I try not to look that far down the standings, to tell you the truth. And I haven't even looked at the standings the last three or four days. It doesn't really matter. What matters with us is just that we come out and play with intensity and try to play hard and act like professionals and you know, and do everything it takes to, to win ball games. Give ourselves a chance. Let's talk about your starting pitcher tonight, Mike Smith. He has had some dandy outings of late. He has. And you know, you would think coming into this park Mike would fit the bill very well. Just go right at guys. But last outing here he struggled just a little bit. We ended up coming back. But maybe he got a little bit lax mentally because he thought he could just throw it over and they ended up getting singles instead of fly balls against him. So I really expect a good outing out of Mike tonight. Being in this park and with the mentality he's got just pitching in big parks, I think he's going to go right at these guys and make them swing it. Last time when he was here, his catcher was Hiroshi. How much does that make a difference? That was the first time the two of them had worked together in a game. Yeah, it might make a little bit of a difference. I think tonight I've got Chris Brionis catching him. They probably, they have a little bit better relationship and Chris might know what Mike likes to throw more often. Mike actually asked me if, if Chris could catch him and you know, that's great with me. Whatever's going to make the pitcher feel comfortable because one guy's got a hit. What I was thinking is maybe tonight, DH and Chris, because he's probably going to have to catch a couple games in a row. But he said the heat index is about 115. It's going to be tough to catch a couple two or three games in a row in 115 degree weather. But that's why Chris is here and we'll let him go at it. Since that game, Hiroshi seems to have taken a step up in his. His pitch calling behind home plate. Yeah, he's a tremendous catcher. I don't know if there's a better defensive catcher in the whole league. Rarely lets a. I don't know if he's got a pass ball all year, catches it real well and gives the umpire a great look at the strike. Just does all those things. But you're right, I think the pitch calling is probably the one area that he needs to improve and he is getting better and better, you know, and, and I think at this level, probably all of them do. I think Chris Brionis last game when Jeff Garf came in, I think he probably could have done a little bit better job mixing it up. First six batters that Jeff face, we threw fastball, first pitch. So those are things we talk about. And you could tell that they were just sitting on it, sitting back, twisting their back heel and trying to swing as hard as they can. Even if you have to throw a curve ball in the dirt just to show them that you're going to throw something different, that stuff has to happen. So it's a learning process still. These guys are still young and it's easier to sit here in the dugout and evaluate the game rather than be out there and be under the pressure of actually playing and doing it yourself, you know, so. But that's, I guess what I'm here for is to try to help them through that and talk them through it a little bit. What about this field? Is it a good field to play on? Oh, I think the guys love it when they're on defense. I think when they're in the batter's box, you look at, we've had good success here. I think there's a ton of base hits out there. People look at the fence and see how long it is. But our team, we're not, you know, we're Just not that kind of a team. I look out there and see a lot of base hits because the outfield is just so huge. You got to remember it's 430 to center field, 340 and whatever is 345 down, 360 down this line. And so there's, you know, probably a third more area to cover on this field than at Hearst Field. So Kendrick and Joe, they're going to in left and center, they're going to cover some ground. DG is going to have to be hit to him. He's not an outfielder by trade. He's just forced into the outfield right now. We just tell him to play deep and keep the ball in front of him. Last couple of times he's played in right though. Looks like he's showing a little more range. Yeah, I think it's all just a matter of getting used to in right field, you know, you think in little league, you know, let's put our least athletic guy in right field Here in pro ball and college baseball and even high school baseball, it's one of the toughest fields to play because a right handed hitter that hits the ball to right field, the ball is really tailing towards the line. And if you were playing right field, the ball's going to come at you and go to your left real hard and some balls will even hook. So it's probably a tougher field to play than any one of the fields out there, you know. And don't ask me why I'm sticking DG out there. Maybe I'll. After talking myself into it, I might switch that up now. But Joe feels real comfortable in left field. And you might as well leave the guys who feel real comfortable in their spots that they feel comfortable in and just let dg. DG is going to feel just as comfortable in left or right or center or catch or third or pitch, wherever we put him. In fact, we've got to find a game here where we play him in all nine positions in one game. We want to try to do that with dg. One brief note about right field in the Major. Sometimes you find the guys with the best arms out there, Roberto Clemente, Roger Ramirez, they had great arms. Yeah. And I think that's. I think you'll see a lot of it. Base hits to right field, especially with two strikes. Right handed hitters are trying to go that way. It's just a field that's an important field. And anything that's hit the right field with a guy in second, you almost expect the Guy, you almost expect him to be thrown out at home or at least have a real close play at home. And Digi's got a tremendously strong arm. Whether he can get reads on the ball or not, that's not really a concern to us. He has to play there. We have no other choice, so we might as well not complain about it. Gotta ask you about a couple of roster changes. Ryan Dombach, he's been released. Yeah, Ryan. After evaluating him for a couple days, we just, you know, we just looked at him and just told him he couldn't play at our level. There's just absolutely no way. Ryan's a kid who. You know, to be honest with you, he may not have made our Dixie College team, but he had a recommendation from Southern California, and we. We gave him a shot, and that's pretty much all we can do. We were trying to help him out, but we don't want to embarrass him. We don't want to embarrass ourselves. And that's the situation, to be honest with you, that we were in. He was very overmatched. The at bat that I put him in and taking ground balls with him. I was actually taking ground balls with him on Wednesday, and he just, you know, he just couldn't throw the ball from deep short over to first base. And you just can't play at this level without being able to do those things. And so we let Ryan go. You'll probably get to Rod. I'll just comment on Rod real quick. You know, our whole philosophy here, and I've talked about it all year, is we just want to play hard all the time and play the game like it's supposed to be played. And, you know, to be honest, there's a couple situations the past few weeks where we're not playing as hard as we should. Not running out, fly balls, not. Not running out, possible home run balls that I wasn't very happy with. And so we had talked about that. And then come Wednesday night, Rod hits a home run and sprints around the bases. I felt like that was really showing me up, just saying, here, watch this. And then he made a comment to somebody in the dugout, and it's just something that I wasn't about to take. Take. We had words. I had 99% of the words. And he ended up getting released. I released him that night. Before we left today, this morning, he came and met with me. And, you know, I think I have a better understanding of where he was coming from. He knows it's his Fault. I think you'll see Rod McCall playing a little bit harder now. And I think he's going to be more of a team guy. The team members love him, don't get me wrong. But you know, it's just a situation where I think you just have to. You have to play the game like it's supposed to be played. At least that's my philosophy. And now Rod knows that. And so we talked and we spent all day talking with the ownership and Rod. And this is where Rod wants to play. This is where he wants to be. Interesting. In the day Thursday that he was released, we had four teams call us concerning Rod. So he's a commodity in our league. People want him. We're lucky to have him in St. George, whether people understand that or not. And he's a good guy. It's just, I think now we're on the same page where the last two, three weeks, maybe we weren't on the same page. And I think Rod knows where I stand. I know where he stands. And we're going to get along now. So Rod won't be with us tonight, but he'll join us tomorrow for the game and be back with us as a member of our team. Gotta ask you about one other thing. You came separate from the team today. This was a family thing. And you have a young man with you right now. It's great. I did. I brought Marcus, my youngest boy, who's 8 years old. He just, he loves baseball. He's out. You know, he plays it five or six hours a day and just drags you out there. And you know, you can't resist just going out and throwing in pop flies or ground balls. And you know, what I try to do is throw him way to the left and way to the right. And so he gets tired and, and try to do that way, but it doesn't work. In fact, we were, the whole family was going to come down. Tyson, my oldest boy, is playing in a 13 year old all star game. In fact, I just barely called them. And I think they're getting beat over at Elks Field right now. But if they would have lost last night, they would have come down too. So we try to, at this time of the year when all starts are over, we try to get everybody involved and go on all the road trips and see what we can do that way. Because, you know, it's. My wife, Danny loves baseball, Mike. And my little daughter gets drug out to most of the games. And so I think it's really just part of our Life. And so we do vacations around it and around baseball, and that's just. It's nice to have Marcus down here and be able to spend some time with him. Mike Littlewood, thank you for being with us. And good luck in winning one for Marcus tonight. Sounds good, Larry. Thanks. But then go out and do the same thing ourselves. Be aggressive at the plate and go get Borges, who's going to start against us tonight. Manager Mike Littlewood, thank you for being with us. Good luck tonight. Thanks. 3, 2, 1. Manager Mike Littlewood, you won one for your son Marcus last night. Congratulations. Yeah, and he earned it. He got forced into being our bat boy last night, and I'll tell you, as hot as it was, and he had to wear a helmet in the dugout. I'll tell you, he took the helmet off in about the fourth inning, and it looked like he just came out of a swimming pool. But, yeah, it was nice to get a win. And they had won four. Fourth straight on the road, just came back. So it was nice to get a convincing win from them. Speaking about sweating, I noticed that Chris Brionis and Mike Smith were both wiping their brows last night. Yeah, they probably lost about 35 pounds between them last night. You know, it's just one of those things. It actually feels good. I would imagine it feels better when you're playing. You get to sweat it out a little bit sitting in the dugout. It gets kind of humid and musty, and you almost have to get out just to feel a little breeze once in a while. But everybody's got to play in the same weather, so we're not worried about it. Excellent performance by Mike Smith. Were you tempted to stretch him through all nine innings? No, he came to me after the seventh and he said, I'm gassed, you know, after the long road trip. And it just. Sometimes when you travel all day and the air conditioning wasn't really working in the bus, that's what you guys tell me. And so he got a little hot on the bus ride, and it makes you a little more tired. And he just didn't have his legs. Although he probably could have gutted it out and got six more outs. I think Jeff Garf needed to come back in and have a good outing. And then we intended for Mark to come in pushout and get a save in that situation. We kept scoring one and another one, another one and took him right out of that save situation. But he was happy to get the inning work. He feels better when he throws a little bit more than when he's got more rest. Let's go back to Jeff for just a minute. He needed the success. He had the success for that inning. You know, last night he looked almost as good as he has all year to me. Throws a fast, two fastballs just right by their three or four hitter. I can't remember which guy it was, but just was. And then gets Dax Jones broke Dax's fourth bat on the night, and Dax threw it in the dugout and almost hit one of his teammates and almost went out of the dugout, as a matter of fact. But that's kind of how Jeff had him frustrated. His ball was really. Fastball is really moving in. That's what he kind of relies on. You know, after he got hit pretty hard in Chico and so did Yoshi. And I think after listening to some of our players, Chico might have had. Might have picked up some tendencies on those guys and might have known what was coming pitch wise. So we're going to have to change some things up a little bit when we play those guys next time. Speaking of last night and the battle, Mike Bouder had his best outing of the year against you guys, and you still beat him. Yeah, you know, he's got a good arm. His curveball can be good at some times and it can be really flat and just spin at times. And I think with him, you've just got to take. He's a little bit wild over the zone, which means he throws a lot of pitches where our hitters can hit him. You know, our hitters did a good job taking advantage of those pitches that were right over the strike zone. He likes to work fast. We appreciate that as coaches to get the games moving along. But I thought we did. He did a nice job. He held us to four or five runs. And, you know, the last guy that came in kind of. I think it was his first outing and kind of gave up the boat. But, yeah, Bouder did a pretty good job. And Bouder's actually a guy that we tried to sign because, you know, we need a lefty in the pen and I think if used properly, he could be pretty. Pretty effective for somebody. Let's talk a little bit. I want to go back to Mike Smith just a little bit. When he comes to you and says that he's gassed, that's the veteran pitcher talking, not the one who is going to gut it out and get to the end. Exactly. He knows that's when I have to be real smart and just listen to them and it makes the decision really easy. You Know, if you have a Steve Cook or a Mike Smith that comes and says, I'm gassed, you know they're telling you the truth. On the other side of the coin, when they say they can go, then you know they can go too. And so, you know, you really know what they're getting, what you're getting from them. Maybe like a Jeremy Thomas, who's a little bit younger. He's just got that competitive fire, you know, he'll be throwing a night. He may in the fifth, sixth inning, if he's still in the game right then we hope he is. If he's starting to look tired, he may say, I'm ready to go. And you just. So I have to make a determination on his performance, the last couple batters, as opposed to really what he thinks. It's not that they're lying to you, it's just that their competitiveness takes over a little bit more than their mental capacity at that point in time. Gotta ask you, Hiroshi Fujimoto gets the only home run of the night. That's his second of the year. And he hit it hard. He did. And Rod wasn't here and missed his second one. And I made the comment that he couldn't hit it out from second base. And I'm glad he proved me wrong. You know, the ball was actually carrying pretty well to right field last night. And we use that. We hit three balls to the wall. Heath Hayes hits the ball against the wall. Joe Trippy hits one deep that way. They didn't use that as well as we did. I think we really went with pitch as well. But it was last night was carrying the right field for some reason. Although Hero did turn on that and hit it hard. And we're going to give him a rest tonight for doing such a good job. He had a lot of stolen bases. Maybe the two easiest deals, it seemed to be Heath Hayes and DG Nelson was there a long time before the ball got there. Yeah, well, you're talking about the one that DG got hit. After he got hit, I think he was just. He was thinking the same thing I was, is if that pitcher's gonna. If a pitcher's gonna go inside, you know, you don't go out, you don't go to the head. You just don't. I mean, you don't see guys get thrown at. And I'm not saying it was intentional, but if you're gonna throw inside, you throw down around the knees, from the waist to the knees. You don't throw it up high. And so that's what. That's why DG was upset. And nobody thought it was intentional, but it's just, it's stupid pitching. You don't throw at somebody. You don't throw high and tight to people and go head hunting. And I thought the best way to get back at this guy is to steal first pitch because he had a slow move. He was 1.6 to home and most guys are 1 2, 11 to 1 3, so we could take it easy. And I didn't even have to give him the signal. He knew exactly what he wanted and kind of put it in his face a little bit. And that's the competitiveness coming out in dg. And Heath, on the other hand, he's just smart, knows when to get jumps, can take advantage of a pitcher's weakness, and that's what he did. Back to that hit by pitch, it looked like a slow breaking pitch that hit him in the helmet, but man, you could hear it all over the car. Actually, it was a fastball. It was because he threw two curveballs low on outside and was down 2 0. And he came, he wanted to come in with a fastball. Got away from him again. Yeah, it hit him pretty hard and it was a fastball and hit him pretty square. But talked to DG a couple times today and he feels okay. The bells aren't ringing anymore. No. And dg, you probably noticed we're going to move up to the four hole tonight with Rod back in the lineup and hopefully he'll get some better pitches to hit. He's swinging it pretty well. And move Heath down into the six hole where I think he might be more comfortable over the long term. We'll be back and talk about tonight after this timeout. 3, 2, 1. Manager Mike Littlewood. You only had nine position players last night. You do have a little bit of a bench tonight. We do. We've signed utility player Ron Battle from San Diego, a guy who's not going to be flashy, he's not going to make spectacular plays, but he's going to make 80% of the routine plays he can play. He was in spring training with us last year and didn't make the club, but, you know, we're really pretty tough up the middle and that's kind of where his forte is, up the middle. And at that point in time, we just didn't need a guy right there. But Kalen foulds was the guy who, who kind of took Ron's place. But Ron's a good guy, good team guy, fits into chemistry. Wise into our team very well and he can give every guy a rest. Pretty soon it's going to be Ron Battle needing a rest. If he can stay healthy tonight, we're going to put him in left field, move Joe Trippy to center because Kendrick Wallace has been battling something on the exterior part of his lower leg and he can only run about 60%. So we're going to give him a rest and see if that helps him at all, see if he can get back and hopefully that will do it. We may have to give him a couple days rest. We just don't know. Dr. Jezevar's looked at it and has given him a program, but we're going to give Kendrick a rest and just see if he can get through that. For Ron Battle. Has he been playing since he was cut by the Pioneers last year? He's just been playing in competitive summer leagues in San Diego County a couple times a week. And, you know, Ron's a guy who just loves the game. The fans, our fans should just love to see him out there playing. He'll play hard all the time, knows the game. He's going to come out early and take early BP all the time. He's just that kind of guy, guy who takes pride in what he does, and that's the kind of guy we don't need a superstar on this team. We've got guys who can fill the role as really very good starting position players for us. We just need a guy who can go in, give Brian a rest, give Freddie a rest, give all our outfielders a rest, and it actually enables us to give Bob Nero a rest because we can move Heath over there or we can move somebody else over there and fill in with Ron. So he's going to be a great asset to us. And it'll probably take him some time. He might look a little slow at the plate for the first two or three or four games, but he'll get in the groove as he plays about 10 games in a row here. We talked yesterday about the situation with Rod McCall. He's back with you now. Yeah. Rod drove in from Chino today, he and his wife. And, you know, I think everything's good. I think everybody's on the same page. I spoke to him and, you know, I just think that situation is behind us and it's good that at least now everybody knows where we stand. Both Rod, myself and everybody on the team, I think understands what we're looking for in this team, and that's simply to play hard every day and give 110% every day. It's not much to ask, I don't think when you're getting paid to play the game. Jeremy Thomas is on the mound tonight. He's had some mixed outings of late and given up some solo home runs. You know, I think his last outing was kind of a microcosm of the last month he's thrown. He had the one inning he threw was just tremendous. The seventh inning or the eighth inning, whatever, seventh inning gets three up, three down, then he goes out and, you know, walks a couple guys and not even close to the zone and almost to the situation where a situation where we need to take him out. You know, he's had great games and he's had off games and, you know, I don't know what it is. I really don't. I wish I could help him out. I just think it's, you know, he'll come to the park and say, I got a real good slider. I worked on, I had it in college and I'm going to put that in. You know, I'm just saying, Jeremy, let's get three good pitches, let's use them, let's go with them and do it. Kind of pitch to your strengths, establish your fastball, and let's just kind of keep it simple here. And if he does that, he'll be successful. Chris Brionna is behind the plate. How much will that help him? I think he feels comfortable with Chris. Again, every pitcher is different. Chris knows our pitching staff probably better than anybody. And we've talked to Chris about maybe mixing it up a little bit better. I thought he did a great job with Mike Smith last night. Not just putting down ones, but mixing it up a little bit. And that's what he's going to need to do with Jeremy. But I really think in the first two, three innings, Jeremy needs to establish that fastball, get ahead fastball, and then later on, let's start mixing it up. But it's hard if you don't start off throwing strikes to come back and then try to reestablish yourself instead of doing it early. You got the win last night, ended a brief two game losing streak. What about tonight? Going into this game, are there different keys? I don't think so. I mean, I think the big key for us is Jeremy just, you know, we're going to, we should put the ball in play against anybody that faces pitching wise. And I think that the whole key is with Jeremy just to have a strong outing. Our bullpen's ready to Go. We've got Jason Chivers. I think Jeff Garf could come in again for one or two batters. Yoshi Wakita is ready to go and Pushoda is ready in the pen also. So we're good there. And tomorrow we're going to actually have Nate Yeske throw an inning or two in our game live and he'll start Tuesday for us. So pitching is kind of lining out. We talked about it last night where if Mike gave us a good 6, 7, 8 inning game, it would really rest our pen and help us three or four games down the road. And he did that for us. It's interesting. You talk about strategy in a game, but sometimes strategy in one game has the ripple effect. Well, there's no doubt. You know, we almost had to give up two games against Chico. Not that we would have won those games anyway, but, you know, we could have forced Mark Pushota to throw three innings and he probably could have done it for us in one of those games. But, you know, we just elected to have Heath go out there and try to battle. You have to almost sacrifice a couple games. There's always a 90 game season, I think, or in a professional season where you play every single night, you have to almost sacrifice a game or two to look forward to the next few games. And that's what we did. And it's tough. And you hate to do them at home because everybody wants you to win. But those are just things I think you have to do. You can't just play one game at a time here. You can play the game at a time, but I think me as a manager, I've got to look down the road and kind of set things in line for three, four nights down the road instead of just looking at tonight only. Manager Mike Littlewood, thank you for being with us and congratulations on the victory and good luck on winning another one for Marcus tonight. That's right. We'll try to get one more. Thanks, Larry.