Number 1 question.

With J.J. Hardy extending his deal with Baltimore yesterday, the off-season free agent shortstop market was stripped of one of its only legitimate frontline starters, leaving injury-prone Hanley Ramirez and then an underwhelming collection including Stephen Drew, Asdrubal Cabrera, Jed Lowrie, and Clint Barmes. With teams like the Yankees and Mets and Dodgers and Tigers and A’s and Pirates and Padres — most of whom are either big-market spenders or teams that view themselves as contenders or both — theoretically looking for shortstop help going into 2015, did Elvis Andrus’s trade value just tick up a bit with the Hardy development?

Would you be comfortable going with Luis Sardinas at shortstop in 2015, or someone like Lowrie or Barmes, and see if Jurickson Profar can play his way onto the big club sometime during the season and reclaim an opportunity to establish himself as a long-term core piece?

Sure, the Hardy extension not only takes the player off the boards but takes Baltimore out of the market as well — but there are at least a couple high-profile teams on that list who were probably interested in a younger player who they can plug in for the rest of the decade to begin with. Would you be open to seeing what sort of return Andrus could bring, given the holes a trade could theoretically address and the money it would free up?

Would you be concerned about the impact that trading Andrus would have on the clubhouse?

Do you think Andrus, who at 24 and 25 wasn’t really any more productive than he was as a 20-year-old rookie, has more in there, or more to the point, that he has more in there that you can get out of him?

With J.J. Hardy no longer an available option to any number of teams looking for an answer at shortstop, would you trade Elvis Andrus?

I am not asking you to respond to the above. And I’m on record: Elvis Andrus is my second-favorite Texas Rangers baseball player. Ever.

I’m just imagining whether this line of questioning came up during Kevin Cash’s interview yesterday, and in Joe McEwing’s and Jeff Banister’s Wednesday, and in Torey Lovullo’s Tuesday, and in Mike Maddux’s and Steve Buechele’s last week, and whether it will come up when the Rangers visit with Tim Bogar and Alex Cora today.

You’ve gotta fill those half-day and full-day managerial interviews with a whole lot of questions, lots of which have to be very tough to answer.

If not to ask.