Funny how that happens.

The Red Sox finished 26th in the majors in slugging percentage last year and were a bottom-third offense overall.  And, instead of having some black hole that could easily be papered over, every single regular on their team mustered an OPS+ of 89 or higher, with the lowest two figures coming from a very good defensive center fielder and a very good defensive catcher.  So, it makes it a little trickier to make a significant upgrade.  There is likely some internal improvement here — Xander Bogaerts and Mookie Betts have been better than last year, and Rafael Devers and Andrew Benintendi could improve after their first looks at the majors.  But, as it stands, they have Hanley Ramirez to man both first base and DH, and that’s kind of it.

Abreu would represent a colossal upgrade over last year’s first baseman, Mitch Moreland and his .246/.326/.443 line, and Boston’s need would also explain their reported interest in Kyle Schwarber, who really should be on an AL team sooner or later, rather than play on the same team as Anthony Rizzo.

As anticipated since his arrival, Dave Dombrowski has liberally dealt minor leaguers to upgrade the major league roster, adding Craig Kimbrel, Chris Sale, and Drew Pomeranz for something like a half dozen Top 100 prospects.  Between that and the graduation of Devers and Benintendi, and the utter implosions of Blake Swihart and Henry Owens, and the system is quite a bit thinner than it once was.

Michael Chavis and Jason Groome are the two I anticipate will be near the top of the list, and following the logic to its ruthless extreme, they would likely be more helpful with the White Sox’ competitive window than Abreu would, given that he only has two years left on his deal.  Maybe the organization thinks those two are enough for Abreu — it’s hard to say, prospect evaluation is awfully tough, and organizations can vary quite significantly on their estimation of each, and maybe the White Sox think they can get more than that elsewhere down the road.

Then there’s the difficulty of figuring out how the league as a whole values corner bats.  Edwin Encarnacion should DH more than he plays first base these days, but his bat is no joke, and he hardly signed for what was expected heading into last offseason.  J.D. Martinez was a rental, but he too can mash and was traded a few months ago for a song.

Further cutting against a potential trade, the White Sox love having Abreu for reasons beyond his skills on the field, as he has unquestionably seized the role of veteran leader for a growing horde of rookies.  Indeed, his mentorship has already borne quite tangible, publicly visible fruit, as he was able to get Reynaldo Lopez to admit he was pitching through an injury when the coaching staff could not.  So they would need to truly get blown away to make this trade worth their while.

Perhaps Stanton being ripped from St. Louis’ jaws and plopped onto the Yankees has suddenly changed the calculus severely for both Boston and the Cardinals.  Stanton’s sudden landing in the Bronx with the whole rest of the offseason ahead to bolster their weaknesses may might mean Boston is a whole lot less confident in their ability to win the division.  Moreover, if more than one team is now interested in Abreu, you have a potential bidding war, even better for a seller.

The rest of the market for big bats is either profoundly less appetizing than Abreu or vastly more expensive in years and money — and in the case of Eric Hosmer, arguably both.  Maybe Abreu is the porridge that’s just right for these teams, and maybe the White Sox will get bowled over.

I’d still bet against him moving, at least this winter, but Dombrowski and the Cardinals are both motivated, and Stanton’s dramatic trade may be a seismic enough event to alter the course of the offseason for half the league.

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1. Jose Quintana wasn’t good.  Specifically, he fell apart in the second inning, allowing a three-run home run to major league debut-ing JaCoby Jones and a two-run opposite field shot to Nick Castellanos. Both came after jumping ahead 0-2, which reflects a problem he had all day putting hitters away once he got to two strikes — he didn’t register a strikeout until his 16th batter faced.  He had trouble locating his curveball, which I suspect helps to explain the former.

The worst thing about Quintana’s bad outing wasn’t just that it directly caused the White Sox to lose, but it kicked off a horrible conversation about whether or not the White Sox should have desperately rushed to trade him for whatever package they could scrounge up. The idea that a player with his track record’s value would fluctuate from start to start is asinine. Also, if you’re afraid that if you keep Quintana for too long you won’t get as much as you should for him, perhaps the solution isn’t “Trading him for less than you should get for him.”

2. We were treated to a preview of how the lineup is likely to function for the foreseeable future.  The top half is pretty good, and three of the top four had multi-hit games. And granted, Justin Verlander is a tough draw, but Tim Anderson went o-for-4 with 3Ks, and even though his rookie year was a success, this was always going to be an issue he’d have to work through.

There are some pretty massive holes in this lineup, and it’s going to yield a lot of 1-2-3 innings.

3. The bullpen looks like it should be a good group, and today it posted 3.2 shutout innings after Quintana’s departure.  Jake Petricka and Zach Putnam both looked largely like their old, effective selves in their first appearances back from long absences due to injury.

If Petricka and Putnam are good again it would make it that much easier to manage the day-to-day should they trade David Robertson or Nate Jones.

4. PECOTA projects Tyler Saladino for a .305 OBP and it’s not hard to see why, given his major league track record.  But he registered two hits and a walk in his debut at the top of the lineup, and he had plus OBP seasons in the minors, so maybe if there’s more development in there from regular PAs he could beat his projections and wind up at a .330 or .340 level? Please?

5. It’s been months of rumors about Quintana to the Astros or Pirates or maybe the Yankees, and those are all logical trade partners to varying degrees.  Recently, however, the Cardinals have been floated as another suitor for Quintana’s services.  The estimable Jon Bernhardt explored the idea further, arguing that it makes a ton of sense for St. Louis and that they should have the pieces to get it done.

Quintana makes a lot of sense for a lot of teams, which — circling back to number one — is another reason why the White Sox can hold out for the right offer.

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It makes sense that teams both want to trade for Robertson and are wary of pulling the trigger. But the White Sox have an even better trade chit in their bullpen and as you’ve likely ascertained from the headline, his name is Nate Jones. Jones isn’t as well known by the common fan, though it isn’t through any fault of his. He’s never been the official closer and has been toiling in anonymity on mostly terrible White Sox teams since breaking into the majors.

Jones combines height (6-foot-5) with a strange delivery that seems to taunt hitters with an “I will hold this ball in the sky and smite you with it” motion, yielding an arsenal consisting almost exclusively of a power heater living in the upper-90s and a devastating slider. And as the years have added up, he’s done so to increasingly impressive results. Excluding his lost 2014 season (lost to Tommy John surgery), his cFIP has gone from 97 in 2012 to 75 in both 2013 and 2015, and, finally, 66 in 2016. His DRA- over that same stretch? 99.4, 76.0, 81.8, and 69.9. His WARP last season was 2.2. For comparison’s sake, Aroldis Chapman‘s WARP the past four years have been 2.3, 2.3, 2.1, and 1.6. Every year has seen Jones walk fewer and fewer hitters per nine while maintaining a K/9 over 10. He’s not lighting in a bottle. He’s just lightning.

Other than Quintana, there might not be a more valuable asset the White Sox have on their roster when realistically assessed for trade value. Not only is he an incredibly talented reliever who would be closing on more than a goodly few teams, he’s cheaper than a Hot-N-Ready. His next two seasons cost less than $6 million, combined with club options over the following four seasons for less than the market rate.

And this is a baseball market where one year of Wade Davis can get you Jorge Soler. Where 1.5 years of Zach Duke turn into Charlie Tilson. Half a season of Aroldis Chapman netted a Top 15 prospect (Gleyber Torres), two more prospects, and a swingman. And, of course, 2.5 years of Andrew Miller netted the Nos. 16 and 52 prospects (Clint Frazier and Justus Sheffield), as well as another pitching prospect and a reliever. And while he is not on the pedigree level of Chapman and Miller, he costs less and comes with far less baggage. Some lucky team is going to trade for Jones in the near future and the White Sox’s rebuild will benefit very heavily from it.

But assessing where the Sox stand and how their system will look like moving forward feels empty with the third major piece of their teardown–and countless secondary ones–still lingering and dangling over our heads for nearly a month now. Both Yoan Moncada and Luis Basabe are going to strike out a ton in 2017 and inspire a bunch of misplaced anxiety, and why worry about it now when there are still sweet, sweet trades to be pulled?

Jon Heyman dropped a big notes column this week, but instead of updates about the Sox selling off the best player on their roster for more prospects, he mentioned them as potential buyers amid a strangely stacked first base market. Specifically, he described them as “eying things from a comfortable distance, with the possibility to jump in.” That would seem to line up with the idea as using up a 1B/DH slot on a veteran reclamation project or trade chip rather than just org filler. If the market is crowded and inexpensive enough, this could be a very nice use of financial resources they won’t be using elsewhere.

For any actual Jose Quintana chatter this week we are left to tweets from the USA Today’s Bob Nightengale, which mostly serves to retroactively reaffirm that there was discussion with the Yankees and Pirates. These kind of leaks can often be posturing, and the New York Post’s Joel Sherman, shot down the idea that the Yankees were trying to get a Quintana and David Robertson together.

As bizarre as it is to consider them on the same plane, the Yankees and Pirates, both are cost-conscious, possible contenders who would be more interested in adding a long-term asset like Quintana than a veteran on an expiring contract, and have the prospect depth to make the deal work (this is also true for the Astros). We’ve already discussed the Pirates triumvirate of Austin Meadows, Tyler Glasnow and Josh Bell, and the Yankees could headline a package with some selections of Gleyber Torres, Clint Frazier and Jorge Mateo, but we’re entering 2017 with no clear idea of their willingness to do so. Robertson going to a team that already has Aroldis Chapman and Dellin Betances always seemed kind of unusual, but can serve as a useful reminders that relief help is coveted pretty much anywhere. Perhaps the most important note in here is mentioning the Sox likely eating money in a Robertson deal. Taking on salary in order to increase the strength of the prospect return is absolutely an advantage to rebuilding they should be utilizing, and again, would have been well-served to do in 2013.

Even if it’s just a repeat of last offseason at this point, crossing over into the new year with markets for major trades and free agents still developing is still surreal. But Quintana and Robertson’s exoduses seem way more imminent than some of the more time-limited Sox assets. When the Dodgers re-signed Justin Turner, it erased the obvious interested party for Todd Frazier‘s likely expensive 2017 services (estimated $13.5 million). Without an obvious third base hole on a contender, Frazier is stuck amid a glut of bats, and coming off a down year. Eating some salary on him seems very necessary to facilitating a pre-season move, but the Dodgers’ reported disinterest in losing prospects even on the level of right-hander Walker Buehler in trades probably was prohibitive for a Sox pursuit of massive prospect returns.

Buzz for Melky Cabrera and Brett Lawrie has been non-existent, not that they are the type who would be breathlessly reported on at this stage. Cabrera was an above-average switch-hitting bat in 2016, although decidedly below-average defensively, and while Lawrie is hardly a Gold Glove candidate at second base, being able to cover there at all with a near-league average bat means neither of these are toxic assets. A third of the league being obvious rebuilders cuts the legs out of the trade market, and half the league being aghast at the idea of absorbing salary is a further hindrance. Bad money is a bigger anathema than bad product these days.

Jose Abreu has not been mentioned anywhere since some initial conversations with the Rockies that took place before their bizarre signing of Ian Desmond, possibly as a first baseman. The Rockies’ actions being completely inscrutable always means the window is open for a deal, but “the crazy people might do anything” is little comfort.

The lack of action on Nate Jones is probably the most confounding element of this bizarre offseason to me. He outperformed Robertson last year significantly, is vastly less expensive and secured long-term on incredibly team-friendly terms, and if the Sox are fencing Chris Sale and Adam Eaton, and considering dealing Quintana, a reliever over 30 with a Tommy John surgery in his history is the last person they should be clinging to during both a rebuild and a boom in the value of relievers.

This increasingly slow market is due to pick up again once the new year gets started and could make all of these concerns foolish, but most of the hope for a swift teardown, where every Sox asset of value would be easily swapped for a prospect bounty have been left behind in Maryland. It’s too soon to bemoan the Sox notoriously aggressive approach to trade negotiations for prospects, but easier to envision a world where it becomes an issue.

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White Sox currently focused on a rebuild, but it’s unclear whether they’ll find offers acceptable to them for Chris Sale, Jose Abreu, etc.

— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) November 14, 2016

This decision is questionable at the very least, but it’s the direction in which the front office seems confident. One of, if the not the most important part of a White Sox rebuild is trading Chris Sale.

Rather than fielding a competitive roster around Sale for the past five seasons, the White Sox have found themselves “mired in mediocrity” thanks to a refusal to spend at the right times and an inability to identify the right players to spend on. Now that the Sox are look ready to rebuild, and the best and most decisive way to start that process is to dangle their ace in front of the market and sell him to the highest bidder.

The 27-year-old lefty has three more years left of team control and has finished in the top six of AL Cy Young voting in every year he worked as starter, and is likely to do so again in 2016. Simply put, a pitcher of Sale’s caliber at a team-friendly price (he can earn up to $38 million over the next three seasons) is hard to come by.

When searching for precedent of a trade of a pitcher with Sale’s resume, low cost contract, and years of team control, I came up mostly empty. The closest trade of recent vintage is when the Kansas City Royals traded Zack Greinke to the Milwaukee Brewers for Lorenzo Cain, Alcides Escobar, Jeremy Jeffress and Jake Odorizzi before the 2011 season. Greinke had two years remaining on his contract, an AL Cy Young award on his resume, and was headed into his age-27 season.

The Greinke trade was instrumental in the Royals rebuild, which ultimately led to two-straight World Series appearances and one championship, but it did not start the process by itself. At the time of the Greinke trade, the Royals were already deep into the process of building their new core, and had Mike Moustakas and Eric Hosmer in the organization and nearly major league ready. Even after the infusion of major league ready talent, the Royals’ World Series Championship was not until five years after the trade; not a long wait, but slower and more typical than the Cubs’ accelerated ascent to the top of the league

If the White Sox were to follow a similar timeline, Jose Quintana, Jose Abreu, and Adam Eaton would all be gone from the team (assuming they don’t extend or re-sign) by the time their new acquisitions are at their peaks. Most additions made from a Sale trade would arrive and begin making an impact just as the rest of the current core was on its way out or in decline. As valuable as Sale is, trading him alone wouldn’t provide the Sox with a whole new core. It would place the White Sox in a similar position to where they are now: a several really good players, surrounded by insufficient depth, and what they gain in long-term assets and ceiling they would forfeit in immediate star power and production from a single roster spot.

That brings us to the next issue with a Chris Sale trade: finding a team willing to pay the right price. For the sake of comparison, in the Greinke trade the Royals received two of the Brewers’ best position prospects, their best pitching prospect, and a throw-in. Sale should theoretically be worth more than that because of another whole year of team control at a lower salary.

Teams that can trade that much talent without directly eliminating their chances to reach the postseason in the next season–and the strongest reason to acquire Sale would be the firm up a postseason contender–aren’t very common. Currently the teams that best fit the bill are the Dodgers and Red Sox, with the Rangers also a possibility. All three would love to add a top-end starter to take them to a whole new level, and all three of those teams also have prospects ready to make a major league impact in the next few years. But while this appears to make the White Sox and each team clear trade partners, problems are bound to arise when meaningful discussions actually begin.

The Red Sox, Dodgers, and Texas all have their own set of “untouchable” prospects they intend to shield from any trade discussion. Unsurprisingly, those prospects are the best ones in their respective systems. All signs and reports hint of a wide gap between the White Sox demand and what teams are willing to give. In other words, if the White Sox really want to trade Sale this offseason and begin their rebuild, they will need to prepare for a lengthy negotiation process to shake loose tightly-held assets, or for the sake of expediting the deal, they’re going to have to trade him for less than he’s truly worth. Lopsided trades happen all the time, of course, but starting a multi-year rebuild by getting owned in a trade for your best asset doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in the merits of the process.

Keeping Sale does not seem like a better option in a full rebuild. He’s the greatest asset on the team and if they sell away everyone but him, he spends another three seasons on a squad with an inability to win games. If they continue refuse to buy to add to the roster, he remains a star on a team with no purpose. It’s understandable to want the Sox to pick a direction, since sitting in the middle provides no hope for the future and only offers failure in the present. But selling away Sale at this moment is a careful process that could lead to a mistake if rushed. With his price as high as it is, it’s still tempting to consider giving Sale one more shot to win in a White Sox uniform by spending a small amount of money to improve the roster, but the Sox are simply unwilling to take that step.

In science, the second law of thermodynamics says that the universe is always moving towards increased disorder and chaos. Some call that Murphy’s Law, which often gets simplified into ‘anything bad that can happen, eventually will.’ With the misfortune they have found in their moves in recent years, the White Sox seem to be ruled by their own version of this universal law, which only heightens concern on how they approach this, the franchise’s most important trade of the next decade.

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Since becoming a full time starter in 2012, Sale has thrown 789 (mostly) dominant innings with an average of 10.3 strikeouts per nine innings (K/9), 2.0 walks per nine innings (BB/9) and fewer than one home run allowed per nine innings (HR/9). Only three other pitchers in major league baseball during this time frame averaged more than 10 K/9, fewer than 2.3 (BB/9) and allowed less than 1.0 HR/9: Clayton Kershaw, Max Scherzer, and Stephen Strasburg. Sale has also accumulated a total of 17.96 Deserved Run Average Wins Above Replacement Player (DRA_WARP) from 2012 to 2015; ranking sixth in the majors during that time behind the aforementioned Kershaw and Scherzer and other well-known top flight starting pitchers Zack Greinke, Felix Hernandez, and David Price.

So what does all of that mean? It means that Chris Sale is no doubt one of the top pitchers in major league baseball any way you slice it — end of story. He’s that good no matter what coast bias you have. However, the one thing that really separates Sale from all of these other pitchers is his contract. Going into the 2016 season, Sale has a guaranteed contract for two years and a relative pittance of a salary: $22.15 million over that time frame. However, Sale also has two team options in his contract which could take the total length and value of the contract to four years and $47.15 million; an average annual value (AAV) of a shade less than $12 million. Of the five pitchers that accumulated more DRA_WARP than Sale from 2012 to 2015, the lowest AAV salary is Felix Hernandez’s $26 million. Price, Greinke, and Kershaw all top $30 million in AAV and Scherzer is somewhere in between Hernandez and the others because of the large deferrals in his contract.

Sale also has increased his K/9 ratio each of the last four years while lowering his Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP) each year from 2012-2014 and maintaining his strong FIP from 2014 to 2015. In addition, Sale went on one of the most dominant eight-game stretches of pitching last year that the major leagues had ever seen; accumulating ten or more strikeouts in each game and posting an ERA of 1.80 during those games. This exciting stretch suggests Sale may not have even reached his peak as a pitcher and even better days may lie ahead of him.

And, of course, Sale is only going to be 27 years old on Opening Day, which is younger than any other pitcher that accumulated more DRA_WARP than him.

To summarize all of this very, very important context: Sale is every bit as good as the other pitchers that I’ve named (save for Kershaw who is essentially an other-worldly superhuman that decided he wanted to come to Earth and dominate the sport of baseball just because). Sale is younger than these pitchers, in all likelihood Sale is still ascending and improving as a pitcher, and most importantly, Sale is earning less than half of what each of these other pitchers are getting on an annual basis. All this adds up to the fact that Chris Sale would be really, really hard for any team to trade for and essentially may cost twice as much to acquire as some of his peers because the absurdly low wage he is making in comparison.

This finally brings me to my main focus of the article, what would it even take to pry Chris Sale from Rick Hahn’s cold, dead hands? Are there even any historical examples of pitchers this young, with this astounding of a track record of success, and this inexpensive getting traded? Really, there is only one example that comes to mind: Pedro Martinez. However, there were two key differences between Sale and Martinez.

The first and largest difference between the contexts of the two hurlers: Martinez had only two years of team control left, was going to be due very large increases in salary through the arbitration process, and this salary would have been unprecedented for the Montreal Expos as a franchise. In 1998, Martinez’s first year with the Red Sox after being traded by the Expos, his salary was a little more than $7.5 million. During that same season, the Expos’ Opening Day payroll for their entire team was only $8.3 million. If the Expos would have kept Martinez, he would have represented nearly 50 percent of the team’s entire payroll, assuming the Expos would have kept every other player on the roster that they had.

In comparison, Sale is under team control for four more years and has a relatively stagnant salary that is highly unlikely to eclipse even 10 percent of the White Sox entire payroll. From a financial standpoint, the Expos were highly motivated to move Martinez because they were not equipped to pay him the salary he was going to receive, and they had fewer years of team control left which made Martinez less valuable than Sale at the point of the trade.

The second main difference is track record of performance. Sale was essentially an ace level pitcher when he took over as a starter posting year-by-year DRAs of 3.16, 3.12, 2.52 and 3.43. Martinez posted DRAs of 4.10, 4.24, and 4.24 before he finally blossomed into the ace he was destined to be when he posted a stellar DRA of 2.30 in 1997, his final year with the Expos. Even making a simple adjustment for the average runs scored (which was about one fewer per game from 1994-1996 in comparison to 2012-2014, so lower Martinez’s DRA by roughly half a run) Sale was still consistently better and had thrown more innings as a starter in his first three full years as a starter.

Obviously, Martinez made a gigantic leap in that fourth season and that makes the difference between the two very murky. I believe that major league baseball viewed Martinez as an excellent pitcher going into 1998, but I would argue that it’s unlikely any team thought he would repeat his insane 1997 performance (though he would go on to do nearly that in each of the next three seasons). I know it’s hard to argue this because Martinez ended up hitting something like his 95^th percentile of expected value added during that next four year period, but my best estimation says that there isn’t much overall difference in expected performance between Martinez and Sale over their next four seasons at the point of trade. Considering performance and salary restrictions and years of team control, it is reasonable to assume that Sale has more trade value right now than Martinez did at the point he was traded from Montreal to Boston.

Turning our focus to the trade return, Montreal ended up getting two highly regarded prospects from Boston in the trade. The Expos got the Red Sox second-best prospect in Carl Pavano (only behind Nomar Garciaparra) and prior to the 1998 season, Pavano was ranked by Baseball America as the ninth best prospect in baseball. The Expos also got Tony Armas, a raw international prospect who climbed all the way to being the 27^th ranked prospect in baseball in 2000 when he started 17 games for the Expos and had a solid rookie season all things considered. This, given the financial constraints that were shackling the Expos, represented very, very good trade return. But knowing that the White Sox can easily afford Sale, and can control him for twice as long as the Expos could control Martinez dramatically increases the acquisition cost of someone like Sale. My guess would be that it would take at the very least two top-tier prospects along with a pair of prospects that are likely to crack top-100 lists soon and ascend over the next couple of years.

A massive trade chip merits a massive return and considering that most executives (and humans for that matter) are risk averse, the White Sox asking price for Chris Sale would likely be higher than the asking price I proposed, and the offering price for teams would likely be lower than what I proposed, as both sides would not want to be seen as “losing the trade.” This is why a Sale trade is just so ridiculously unlikely. Does anyone see the Dodgers giving up Corey Seager, Julio Urias, Cody Bellinger and Alex Verdugo for Sale? What about Boston sending a package of Mookie Betts, Yoan Moncada and Andrew Benintendi for him? Or the Cubs surrendering Kyle Schwarber, Jorge Soler, Gleyber Torres and Willson Contreras? Because, quite frankly, that’s what it would take and there’s not any amount of prospect hugging or Sale discounting that is going to change that. This is why young, superstar pitcher trades are so incredibly rare (and they’re rare for position players, too).

Trade packages like that are rarely, if ever, surrendered. The last mega-blockbuster trade like this was when the Detroit Tigers surrendered six players, including two top-10 MLB prospects and a total of four of the team’s top eight prospects, for Dontrelle Willis and Miguel Cabrera to the Florida Marlins. And even this trade isn’t exactly apples to apples, so to speak. Cabrera in his four prior years to the trade accumulated just over 21 WARP while Willis amassed just under 12 WARP during that same time.

While the Tigers were most likely going to get Sale-level production from Cabrera and above-average production from Willis, making their overall value contributions higher than what we can expect from Sale, the Marlins were highly motivated to move both players because each had only two years of control left and were getting raises through the arbitration process. The Josh Donaldson trade from Oakland to Toronto also serves as another example of a star player being moved, but again, the same theme (cost savings) is prevalent in the deal, as Oakland was well aware that Donaldson would be getting significant raises through arbitration and saw an opportunity to maximize his trade value. Donaldson, after all, was entering his age-29 season and would in all likelihood enter his decline phase within a year or two. The White Sox do not have this kind of financial pressure, which increases Sale’s value to them. The White Sox also have the protection of two team options on Sale, so in a worst-case scenario, they could decline one of those options and protect themselves financially should Chris Sale completely implode.

Performance, age, finances, and even the White Sox position on the win curve combine to make an absurdly high asking price for Chris Sale completely reasonable. Because of that, Chris Sale isn’t going anywhere no matter how badly your team or fanbase wants him. Sox fans, sit back, relax, and strap it down and enjoy watching your ace pitch. It certainly is one heck of a spectacle.

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