Kevin Gorman

But more important to him is the opportunity to win.

This is a guy who wants to win a World Series championship, is not shy about talking about that.

I think the role for baseball, where the people are concerned, is that if there is a salary cap,

and you do pay your superstar players a $50 million, and you're only going to spend to the cap floor, then what it does is it cuts out kind of the young veteran players who have gone through and reached free agency and expected to get a payday.

I think you're going to see a team where you have a handful of superstars, and then you have a lot of rookies playing on the minimum salary.

And I don't know if that's conducive to winning championships.

And that's a greater concern to me.

is can you afford to keep Paul Skeens possibly?

Can you win a championship with Paul Skeens paying him top dollar?

I don't think so if you're the Pirates.

So he may be worth more to you and a huge haul for a trade than to actually keep him and pay him if you're only spending to the cap floor.

But at the same time, you look at what the Washington Nationals did when they traded Juan Soto, and I think Josh Bell was part of that trade, to the San Diego Padres.

you know, they got Mackenzie Gore, they got James Wood, they got Robert Hassel and, um,

And they got C.J.

Abrams.

I mean, they got four guys that are all potential all-stars in that trade.

Yet the problem is they still perform poorly enough that the general manager and the manager both got fired.

So I don't know which one works in your favor, to try to win with Paul Skeens and pay him the absolute maximum, or to try to trade him and get a huge haul for him and know that that team still might not be good enough to win and keep everybody employed.

Based on my vibe today, I would go with O'Neal Cruz batting leadoff and playing center field.

Brandon Lau batting second and playing second base.