Everything I do, I'm always playing music. When I wake up in the morning, I'm playing music. When I'm showering, I've got music playing. When I go to the field, music is playing.
You never hit a good slider or curveball; you just try to go after the mistakes.
If someone throws you a good slider, you're not going to hit it. You've got to always hunt those ones that kind of pop up or hang thigh-high or up.
I really don't like splitting my workouts into lower body one day, upper body the next day - that makes me I feel like I'm working out every day, and I feel like I'm more tired during the season than I need to be.
Fighting for a job - that's been my mindset every Spring Training.
You can never come into the spring feeling like you've got a guaranteed spot. Once you do that, you kind of get stagnant, and someone's going to pass you up.
I've just got to go in there and get some quality at-bats and do my job and help the team win any way I can.
I never want to play timid or scared of anything, especially when my pitcher or my teammates are out there going 100 percent.
If your team is in the trenches, you've got to be in the trenches with them.
Being around veteran leaders such as CC Sabathia and Brett Gardner really helped me.
There should always be competition. You should never feel comfortable, no matter where you are at. If you are a 10-year veteran, you should not feel comfortable. For me, that kind of just drives me, that kind of unknown of what is going to happen. The unknown is kind of what drives me.
When you're facing a different guy every at-bat, he's coming at you with his best stuff. There's no warm-up; there's no 'see a pitch.' You've got to be locked in from the very first pitch... The biggest thing is do your homework before the game starts.
When I was younger, I'd always forget stuff. I think there was probably 4-5 times where we'd drive 30 minutes to a town for the baseball tournament, and all of a sudden, I'd get to the field and look in my bag, and I didn't have my cleats. So my dad had to race all the way home to get my cleats and get back before the game started so I could play.