He's really made great strides in his maturity level and game knowledge. All the philosophies we've been talking about - you know, strike zone awareness, seeing more pitches, things like that - it's always up to the player to take it in and apply it to their game. He's done that, and it's a big credit to him. He's really caught on quick.

More impressive is he did it a lot with two strikes. He can fall behind in the count and showed a lot of patience, worked a lot of counts from two strikes to a walk. He's been very impressive.

There's nothing holding him back. There's not any one area where he's bad. He's multi-talented and a great athlete. It's just games and experience - that's just going to make his overall game better.

I sat down with him and the staff and told him how impressed I've been with his maturity and focus and preparation.

The situation we're in, we've been having trouble scoring runs. It's expected as a fundamental ball club that you have to manufacture runs. That's part of his game, part of his role.