FORT MYERS, Fla. – Competition was the buzzword on Wednesday on Day 1 of official spring training for Red Sox pitchers and catchers.

“We compete for a living, and I think that needs to start from Day 1,” said Nick Pivetta. “The earlier on we can start that and we can compete with each other, and we can, you know, feel the fire and really, you know, get that mindset going early, the better we are going to be as the season progresses.”

Perhaps that sounds too obvious. This is a sport, after all.

Competing with other teams is a given, but the shared mindset on display by Red Sox pitchers this week is different. It indicates a squad that’s hyper-competitive, not only with one another but with their past selves.

“You should always be competing with yourself,” Pivetta said. “You should be with others, but you should always be trying to push the envelope, make yourself better, have a better outing than you did before, change something that you need to change.”

“If you’re always in that competitive mindset, you’re always in that competitive kind of situation, you’re gonna succeed when you’re in the even-more-competitive situations,” he added.

“Having external motivation, or external competition is great, but that’s not always going to be there,” Tanner Houck told the Herald. “Having that internal competitive edge, if you’re competing with yourself today and pushing yourself to get that much better each and every day, then it adds up over a long time. The hard work pays off in the end.”

“I don’t think any guy in here, in this clubhouse, wants to lose,” Kutter Crawford told the Herald. “We play this game to compete.”

As the team’s player representative, Pivetta is serving as his teammates’ point person amidst the ongoing Netflix project about the upcoming season. He’s a fan of several other Netflix sports docuseries, but one in particular, really spoke to his competitive side.

“I’m a huge fan of ‘The Last Dance,’ ” he said.

His favorite part of the Michael Jordan show?

“Getting to know Jordan as who he was as a competitor,” Pivetta said. “But also how much he cared on a daily basis. You know, you see him as a fierce competitor and that, but his caring for, wanting to push guys to be who he was and who he is, to bring up all of the players around him, I think that’s what really stuck out to me.”

That’s evident in how Pivetta speaks about wanting to motivate his teammates and be motivated by them.

“Other guys see what you’re doing and they want to do what you’re doing,” he said. “I always wanted to emulate, do better what Nate (Eovaldi) did the start before me, for example. I would feed off of him going out and doing his thing. Same thing with (Brayan) Bello, same thing with Lucas (Giolito), same thing with Kutter (Crawford). I want to, I do want to be better than those guys, because I want those guys to be better than me at the same time, because if we’re all doing really good, then everything else is kind of smooth sails from there.”

“We all have the same goal, and we all want to win, and post great stats,” said Houck. “Something that we all do really well is turn on the competitive edge. Whenever you get to compete against each other, with how much time we spend together, it’s fun. It’s good banter back and forth after outings, stuff like that. It’s great, I love the camaraderie and competitiveness, because I think it draws us all closer.”

The players’ mindset has already earned the approval of their new pitching coach. “I’m really pleased with the energy level that the guys are coming into camp with,” Andrew Bailey said.