Pete Alonso

And for for us, like we are.

I mean, I can't speak to how much gratitude we have.

But again, we want to make good on it.

We want to make good on it.

I want to take care of things on the field, win as many ballgames as possible, hold up a trophy at the end of the year, and immerse ourselves in the community.

You know, I don't look at it that way.

I think we're bringing in a great player right now to a very good team, and our goal is to elevate the ceiling of the team, stabilize the lineup, bring the right type of veteran into the clubhouse.

You know, what the business end looks like on a transaction like that is secondary, and, you know, since we've been here, starting from a place where we had to rebuild the entire franchise in the way it does business several years ago,

transition to this very robust ownership group that David's brought in and elevate the talent of the team to the point where one American League East Championship and made the playoffs in back to back years and brought in all these young stars.

We've just approached everything

as judiciously and strategically as we could, given the circumstances that we were facing at the time.

And this offseason and this particular player, we found a circumstance where it made sense to make this type of investment, make this type of deal, and build our team around him.

So here we are.

I think we all knew that this was coming at some point.

I couldn't be more pleased that it's with Pete.

Well, you don't know if you're going to get somebody his caliber to add to your lineup.

I mean, that's hard to do in any offseason.

There's very few available.

I mean, I think he's played in five all-star games and hit 30-plus homers or something like that every season of his career, and many of them were 40 or 50.

And his RBI, I mean, just what he's done is really special and really hard to get your hands on.