He's really confident when he pitches against them. When he's on, he's awful tough.

The more we saw him out there, we figured, 'It's time to put him in there.' And we may have held on to him a little bit long, not playing against lefties early. ... Russ? He just keeps getting better and better.

We'll take 3-3 right now having gone in against Boston. Now you can go home, but it doesn't get any easier.

It's the beginning of the year, but your perennial top teams in baseball, if you ever want to get where they're at, you have to beat them. We've got to play good against them.

It's always important in head-to-head games. If you want to get where they're at, you've got to beat them. We've got to play good against them.

Last year, we played well against both those teams, and that gave us confidence. Now, I think we closed the gap a little bit more.

Money against money. What else do you want?

We expected to have a better team than we've had here in a while. The key is to play to good against the teams you're going to compete with all year because there's been optimism built up, expectations and you want to keep that going. You don't want to come out of the gate slow and let the teams you're trying to overtake in your division beat your brains in cause then everybody's like where's the progress?

It was good to have him back out there. He wasn't as sharp, but it's been two weeks. He's fine. He's healthy. He feels good. Any time you pitch against this team, I don't care how good you are, they test you. They make you earn everything you get and he did a nice job for us.