PITTSBURGH — Did you hear the news? The Pirates are going to have "a little more flexibility" on their payroll this offseason!

That is what general manager Ben Cherington told Randy Miller of nj.com at the general managers meetings in Las Vegas the other day, invoking a phrase made infamous by Pirate GMs past, beginning with Dave Littlefield (if not Cam Bonifay) and extending through Neal Huntington and Cherington, who miraculously still has a job after six years of prodigious losing.

It's a trick phrase, a gentle way of saying, "We're gonna skimp like crazy and crawl through flea markets because the owner is allergic to financial risk."

"I don't know exactly where the final [payroll] number will land," Cherington said. "But I feel confident that we'll have a little more flexibility than we've had in other offseasons."

A little more flexibility.

How could the Pirates have any less? If baseball were a yoga class, they've been attempting the downward dog in a full body cast for decades on end. So I guess "a little more flexibility" means they'll finally move a finger?

It'll probably be the middle one, which is what they've been giving fans for the better part of 30 years. Never more so than the past two, when Bob Nutting has employed maybe the greatest young pitcher in baseball history — for less than $1 million this coming season, I might add — and done absolutely Nutting to build around him.

The big offseason signings a year ago were Adam Frazier, Tommy Pham and Andrew McCutchen. (What, Derek Bell wasn't available?) The Pirates finished dead last in hitting. They remain a punch line. And that is what everyone's talking about, even as Paul Skenes, the pitcher in question, wins the NL Cy Young Award.

Skenes won unanimously Wednesday. That was expected and well deserved. Unfortunately, the big story going into the vote was about a Pirates teammate allegedly telling Miller, the nj.com reporter, that Skenes has "no confidence the Pirates ever are going to win" with him in Pittsburgh and that he's hoping for a trade "well before he can become a free agent after the 2029 season."

"Trust me, he wants to play for the Yankees," a Skenes teammate allegedly told Miller. "I've heard him say it multiple times."

In response to that, Cherington unbelievably responded, "I do dismiss it, but I understand it."

On a conference call with reporters Wednesday night, Skenes was offered the chance to address the story. He said he didn't know where it came from, but he didn't exactly crush the ideas presented within.

His first words: "I got shown the tweet [about the story] and really didn't think anything of it. I got some texts about it. ... I'm on the Pirates."

Yes, that is a fact. But for how long? The Pirates control him for four more seasons. The trade rumors began last season and will not cease until he is actually dealt, which probably will happen with two years or fewer remaining on his deal.

But back to his response: "My goal is to win with the Pirates. I love the city of Pittsburgh. The fans are hungry to have a winner."

Skenes then compared this situation to his time at Air Force, when an underdog team rose up.

"Pittsburgh is not supposed to win," Skenes said. "There are 29 fan bases that expect us to lose. I want to be a part of the 26 guys that change that. So I don't know where that [report] came from. The goal is to win. ... I don't know the reporter who reported it. I don't know the player who supposedly said that. But the goal is to win, and the goal is to win in Pittsburgh."

What's important here isn't whether Skenes privately harbors a desire to flee the Pirates (who wouldn't?) and play for a team like the Yankees. It's more about both a ridiculous MLB economic system that makes it impossible for a team like the Pirates to spend half a billion dollars on a pitcher and Nutting's ineptitude and cheapness, which rain on everything, including Skenes' Cy Young.

Both are real. And the mere presence of Skenes in Pittsburgh, as we have talked about, is both a blessing and a curse.

The blessing, of course, is that he is arguably the greatest young pitcher in baseball history. He has the lowest ERA (1.96) through 55 games of any pitcher in the live-ball era. We are beyond fortunate the Pirates lucked into him because of their pathetic incompetence, and give credit to Cherington for one thing: He chose Skenes over LSU teammate Dylan Crews when there was real doubt about who should go first overall.

That might be why Cherington still has a job.

The curse is Skenes' very presence shines a blinding light on this franchise's dysfunction. Instead of anonymously fumbling their dance moves and audition lines in the basement, like they had for years, the Nutting Family Singers are suddenly live on Broadway for all the baseball world to ridicule.

The lowly acclaimed sequel to the "The Pirates of Penzance" is "The Pirates of Parsimony," the story of a tight-fisted sports owner who cares more about his bottom line than winning games, hires all the wrong people and watches his franchise burst into flames despite the presence of a generational star pitcher and his internationally famous girlfriend.

The Pirates do not deserve Skenes, who was more expansive on the conference call than at any time in his career. He spoke of being "adopted" by the city and how he loves the fact that Pirates fans demand a winner and won't pay to watch anything less.

"I personally love that if we're losing, the fans don't show up in the same numbers," he said. "It's not like Chicago or St. Louis. If you want fans, you gotta win. ... It's been 10 years, the second-longest playoff drought in the big leagues. Someone can check my math on the years since we won the World Series. Ahhhhh, 46 years?

"This is why I'm gonna show up to the ballpark. I'm gonna work to get everybody pushing in the same direction."

If that everybody includes the owner, Skenes will have performed a miracle far greater than a 1.96 ERA: He'll have gotten Bob Nutting to move his fingers toward his wallet.

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