YOLO.

I stretched out, motionless, in the pool, having given up on Dallas Keuchel and Will Little’s masterpiece two runs shy of its final, and as I settled in towards the second nap of the day, I thought.

I thought about advancing the ball in a couple of the cases I’m handling, and advancing the ball with our select baseball team. I thought about what I wanted to write next. About Pluto. About dinner.

And about what Yovani Gallardo might have been thinking about.

It was a third straight lackluster effort for the 29-year-old, following a run of eight starts (0.88 ERA, .169/.236/.186 opponents’ slash) in which few other than Zack Greinke were better, and it comes at a time when the Rangers are trying to right themselves against an important baseball clock and when Gallardo has to be thinking about that clock himself.

Whether the righthander wants to be here in 2016 or not, he would stand to benefit from spending the end of this season elsewhere — as long as he pitches well (though that’s true whether he remains a Ranger or not) — because if he’s traded, it eliminates the possibility that he can be tendered a qualifying offer this winter and as a result it opens up his market. Teams eyeing the crop of free agent starters this off-season will factor in which of them will cost them a first- or second-round pick, and which won’t.

Gallardo becomes more valuable if the team he finishes the season with can’t attach a draft pick to his price tag by tendering an offer. And if he doesn’t pitch for the same team all year, a qualifying offer is prohibited.

He can always come back — if he and the Rangers both want that — whether he finishes 2015 here or somewhere else.

Gallardo’s next start, presumably Saturday in Anaheim, is big. It’s big because Texas has a week and a half to figure some important things out, and because Gallardo has a chance to impact the biggest contract of his career, the latter of which may actually not be true but I bet it’s something he ponders as he lays in a pool, thinking.

Six great weeks aren’t erased by one mediocre start, or three, but the reality is there’s a snapshot box that, right or wrong, scouts and GM’s do tend to check off — Matt Garza was on a 5-0, 1.24 (.210/.264/.302) run over six starts when the Cubs got C.J. Edwards, Neil Ramirez, Justin Grimm, and Mike Olt for him two years ago — and it does tend to drive teams wanting to believe they’re getting a guy who’s locked in.

Gallardo hasn’t pitched in the post-season in four years and I’m sure, like any veteran staring at 30, getting back there is near the top of the list of his baseball priorities. He might welcome a trade over the next 11 days because it would theoretically thrust him more decisively into a pennant race. He might welcome a trade because it would make him more marketable this winter, as long as he does his job on the mound in the meantime.

The one thing Gallardo can control before the season ends, to a point, is how he performs. He’ll get his next chance this weekend against the Angels (who, as far as I can tell, is one of only two teams he’s never faced), and then once more against the Yankees in Arlington before the Rangers’ best chance to move him, if that’s their objective, hits its procedural deadline.

There’s no guarantee these next two Gallardo starts will come in a Texas uniform, of course. But he’s probably not the first choice in this market for contending teams hunting arms, and even if he’s Door Number Two or Three for someone out there, those teams will probably want to see him in Anaheim, at least, while they work the phones on pitchers like Cole Hamels and Johnny Cueto and Jeff Samardzija and Scott Kazmir and maybe even David Price and James Shields.

Interesting week and a half ahead. For the team and its best pitcher.