Back in March, Jeff wrote a post entitled “Could Aaron Altherr Be Part of the Core?” Let’s start by just lifting a few paragraphs from that piece.

Aaron Altherr has had a good spring. As should always go without saying, it’s a lot easier to have a good spring than to have a good summer. Worse players have posted better numbers, and we can seldom learn that much from these six weeks of semi-baseball. What I like here is that Altherr has put himself back on my own radar. Although he doesn’t have a clear path yet to regular playing time in Philadelphia, he could conceivably force his way. Not that long ago, he already did.

Altherr’s breakout year was 2015. Then, as a 24-year-old, he trimmed his strikeouts in the upper minors, and he graduated all the way to the majors, where he posted a 125 wRC+. That’s an above-average offensive line for a debut player with quick legs and above-average defense. Altherr was going to play, and play often, until in the following spring, he busted his wrist. He missed that starting opportunity, and when he got back, he wasn’t the same.

The Phillies did give him a chance. Altherr played frequently down the stretch, but his wRC+ was half what it had been. The power went away, and this is where you have to think the wrist injury took a devastating toll. Out of 309 players who batted at least 150 times in both 2015 and 2016, Altherr saw the third-largest year-to-year increase in ground-ball rate. The swing consistency wasn’t there. The swing stability wasn’t there. Wrist injuries aren’t always a valid excuse, but you can see how they could be in particular cases.

Jeff used Altherr’s big spring — he hit .303/.395/.591 in the Grapefruit League — to wonder how heavily Altherr’s miserable 2016 performance should factor into our evaluations. ZIPS and Steamer certainly weren’t very high on him, projecting an 83 wRC+ that suggested the Phillies were right to move him to a fourth outfielder role. A 26-year-old with that kind of offense is not a guy you need to make room for, even on a rebuilding team.

But ZIPS and Steamer didn’t know that Altherr might have been playing hurt last year, and as Jeff noted, his 2016 batted ball profile bears little resemblance to the one he put up in 2015 as rookie. If the wrist was a lingering problem, perhaps a healthy version of Altherr shouldn’t have such a pessimistic forecast based mostly on his total lack of power last year, especially after he showed some legitimate thump in Spring Training.

So that’s the back story. In Spring Training, Jeff found Altherr interesting, and thought maybe there was more power there than the projections thought. Fast forward five weeks, and Alther has made Jeff look like a genius.

After launching a pair of home runs yesterday, Altherr now has 15 extra base hits, five more than he had all of last season. Among players with 80+ plate appearances, he ranks fifth in the majors in ISO, and his 202 wRC+ ties him with Freddie Freeman for sixth best in baseball. Or, if you want a fun comparison, here’s his slash line compared with some other guy who we’ve been writing about occasionally around here.

Thames has played everyday, so he has 54 more plate appearances than Altherr does, plus he has the KBO dominance, so don’t take this comparison to mean that Altherr should now be viewed as an elite hitter. But in a little under a month’s worth of playing time, Altherr has effectively matched the production of one of the biggest stories in baseball this year.

So, yeah, Aaron Altherr is interesting, and he’s currently looking a lot more like the 2015 version that made a splash in Philadelphia rather than the guy who played himself out of a job last year. As Jeff noted, his groundball rate spiked last year, but that has corrected itself in 2017, as his GB% is back to 42%, down from the 51% mark he put up last year. And his average launch angle over the last three years (11.6, then 5.6, and now 10.0) mostly confirms Jeff’s suggestion that his swing was off last year.

And speaking of swings, Altherr hasn’t gone all Yonder Alonso on his approach, but he is something of a minor “swing-change” guy. Here’s Pete Mackinin on his changes, in a piece written by David Laurila in March.

A guy who jumps out to me is Aaron Altherr. He’s adjusted his setup and his swing path. He’s gone from a long swing to a shorter swing, and he’s getting good results because of it. [Hitting coach] Matt Stairs changed him. You have to give Aaron credit, too. A lot of guys aren’t really receptive to making a change from how they’ve swung the bat their whole life. He was willing to do it, so I tip my hat to Aaron.

“The key is to go directly to the ball from your launch position. Instead of A to B to C, what you’re looking for is A to C. [Altherr] has his bat on his shoulder now. He had been starting with his hands up high, and it looked uncomfortable. I always felt his swing looked a little too long. He made the correction.

Jeff noticed the hand position change in his post, so there is some mechanical explanation for Altherr hitting the crap out of the ball this year after slapping it around last year. And while anyone running a 202 wRC+ has almost certainly gotten at least a little lucky, Altherr is definitely making better contact than he did last year; his average exit velocity is up from 88 to 91 mph, and more importantly, from 93 to 98 mph on balls in the air. His airball exit velocity puts him in the same area as Ryan Braun, Manny Machado, Cody Bellinger, Yasmany Tomas, Justin Upton, and Matt Holliday.

So, while he’s not a true talent .392 ISO guy, it seems pretty likely that there’s legitimate power here. And as Jeff noted back in March, if he has legitimate power, then he’s a good player, because everything else is already in place. Altherr already showed a decent idea of the strike zone, but he’s also running a career low 22% O-Swing% this year, and his overall swing rates show a relatively patient hitter who isn’t afraid to work counts. His contact rates have hovered around 75%, a little bit below league average, but his in-zone contact rates have been either around or above league average, and this year, is up at 87%.

His swing-and-miss problem is almost entirely related to chasing pitches out of the zone, which is something that he’s doing less this year than he has previously. If you have to have a contact problem, it’s much better to have low contact rates on pitches that you can choose to take than on pitches you have to swing at. Altherr isn’t Joey Gallo or Byron Buxton, where he’s swinging through pitches in the zone, and that he can hit for real power while making above average contact on pitches in the zone is certainly encouraging.

So we have a hitter who will draw some walks, makes enough contact, and has some power. That’s a nice offensive base to build from, and he’s not exactly slow either. Toss in that he looks like he could have some real defensive value in left field, with the ability to cover center occasionally if need be, and the package starts to look pretty similar to the skillset that made Mitch Haniger a popular guy on FanGraphs over the winter.

Like Haniger, Altherr is a little older, and as a guy who might profile as a good-not-great hitter in a corner outfield spot, he probably won’t become an accepted star. But an above-average hitter who can also play defense is a very nice piece, and there’s George Springer upside to this skillset. Springer, of course, has been producing in the big leagues for four years now, and Altherr isn’t even on three good months as a Major Leaguer yet, so there’s a lot of risk here. As the league adjusts, he might not adjust back, and he very well may join a very long list of guys who were good for 100 at-bats and then got exposed.

But as a good athlete who shows some control of the strike zone, all Altherr really needed was enough power to scare pitchers into not pounding the zone in order to be a big league regular. It’s not easy to fake the kind of power Altherr is showing right now, and while there’s inevitable regression coming, he looks like he might have enough power to let everything else play.

While the Phillies pitching staff got most of the hype last year, their organization has done a pretty nifty job of turning a cast of fringe prospects into the start of a pretty interesting core group of hitters. Between Cesar Hernandez, Odubel Herrera, and now Altherr, the team could now have three solid young players who add value on both sides of the ball. There’s still holes to be filled, but right now, Altherr looks like he’s taking one of the corner outfield jobs and running away with it.

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14 months ago, Jeff wrote a post titled “Welcome Back, Alex Wood“. In the piece, Jeff noted that Wood’s arm slot had been dropping each year, corresponding with decreases in effectiveness since he debuted with the Braves and established himself as one of the game’s best young starters. But during Spring Training of 2016, Wood got his arm slot back up to where it was earlier in his career, and his velocity also was higher than it had been in 2015, when the Braves decided he was about to break down and traded him for Hector Olivera.

With better velocity and a return to his previous release point, Jeff suggested that the Dodgers might get the good version of Alex Wood again, and to some extent, that turned out to be right. His strikeout rate jumped from 17% to 26% while also posting the highest GB% (53%) of his career, so while his 3.73 ERA wasn’t amazing, his FIP and xFIP were both back to his Atlanta levels. But Wood also battled elbow problems that put him on the shelf at the end of May, and when he returned at the end of the year, the team used him as a low-leverage reliever. He showed flashes of promise in his 10 early-season starts, but 2016 wasn’t exactly the hoped-for justification of why the team targeted Wood at the 2015 trade deadline when better pitchers — specifically Cole Hamels — were available.

2017 looked like more it might continue that trend, as Hyun-Jin Ryu‘s return to health pushed Wood back to the bullpen to start the year. And even when he was pressed into starting duty a week into the season due to Rich Hill’s blister problem, the results weren’t that encouraging, as he walked five of the 19 batters he faced and couldn’t make it out of the fourth inning. But despite the wildness, there as one big reason for optimism that came out of that start; Wood showed that his spring training velocity bump wasn’t just preparation for a relief role, but that his fastball might really be back to 2013 levels.

While he sat 94-95 in relief in his first appearance of the year, that could have easily been written off as a normal velo bump that starters get when they move to relief work. But when pressed into a starting role, he still managed to sit 93-94, which is what Wood was throwing back when he was a dominating rookie in Atlanta. The command wasn’t there, but stuff wise, this was as good as Wood had looked in years. And after Hill and Ryu’s DL stints gave Wood the chance to rejoin the rotation for more than just a spot start, Wood has finally looked like the guy the Dodgers hoped they were trading for.

Since April 21st, Wood has made four starts, throwing 20 2/3 innings in the process. And while he hasn’t been asked to pitch deep into those games, he’s dominated opposing hitters over that span.

Wood has struck out 30 of the 84 batters since rejoining the rotation, including 11 strikeouts in his start against Pittsburgh last night. He’s walked just one batter in each of those four starts (one of them intentionally), so his 30/4 K/BB ratio shows how well he’s owned the strike zone. But his dominance goes beyond even that level, as 32 of the 50 batters to put the ball in play against him during that span have hit the ball on the ground. You almost never see a pitcher combine a better than 30% strikeout rate with a 60% ground ball rate, but during these last four starts, Wood’s at a 36% strikeout rate and a 64% groundball rate.

That is Dallas Keuchel‘s groundball ways combined with Chris Sale’s control of the strike zone. Those are good things to have, and insanely good things to have simultaneously. And it’s not like the groundballs Wood is giving up have been rockets; he’s allowed just an average exit velocity of 86 mph during these last four starts, and his .216 expected wOBA based on Statcast data is actually lower than the already-absurd .233 wOBA he’s allowed during this stretch.

Of course, this is all super small sample data. We’re talking about four starts, and only 84 batters faced in those four starts. But it’s worth noting that Wood has never really had a four start stretch this good in his big league career. The closest he came was back at the end of 2014, when he ran a 34/5 K/BB ratio across 28 innings while getting grounders on 54% of his batted balls. Even in the best year of his career, when he ran a 2.78 ERA/3.25 FIP/3.19 xFIP, he didn’t quite dominate over four starts like he has since rejoining the Dodgers’ rotation.

The key for Wood this year really does seem to be the effectiveness of his fastball. For reference, here’s the amount of contact on fastballs in the strike zone against Wood, by year.

In the first couple of years, when Wood was really good in Atlanta, his sinker not only got grounders, but it missed enough bats in the zone to help him get ahead in counts as well, and then he could get hitters to chase his curve and change-up out of the zone. Over his first four years, the pitch became more and more hittable, and Wood lost the ability to miss bats, relying on walk-avoidance and grounders to keep him afloat.

This year, though, the fastball is missing bats again, like it was earlier in his career, and that’s putting him in more advantageous counts, which leads to chases on breaking balls out of the zone. Last year, opposing batters swung at just 33% of his curveballs out of the zone, but this year, that’s up to 46%. Wood’s ability to get early strikes with his fastball has put him in a position to bury his off-speed stuff in the ground and still get hitters to chase.

And so, for the first time in a Dodger uniform, Alex Wood looks like the guy Atlanta had at the beginning of his career. He’s mixing a mid-90s fastball with a mid-80s curve and a high-80s change-up, and getting both whiffs and groundballs with all three pitches. He’s never been a guy who has pounded the strike zone, but by getting ahead in counts and getting chases out of the zone, Wood can keep his walks down and his strikeouts up. And even when he’s giving up contact, it’s been of the weak groundball variety.

For right now, the Dodgers are effectively manufacturing injuries in order to keep Wood in the rotation, pushing back a decision to ship someone else to the bullpen in order to keep Wood starting every five days. But with the way he’s throwing right now, Wood might be the team’s second or third best starter (depending on Rich Hill’s ability to stay on the mound), and it’s hard to see him getting bumped back to the bullpen again any time soon. This version of Alex Wood is a high-quality starting pitcher, and the one the Dodgers have been waiting for since they acquired him.

Yesterday, Yonder Alonso hit a home run. Used to be, that would be notable because Yonder Alonso home runs didn’t happen very often. This year, that home run was notable because it was ninth of the year, matching his career high for home runs in a season. Alonso matched his career-best home run total on May 7th, in his 29th game of the 2017 season.

You can only do something like that if you haven’t hit many home runs previously, and there are few regular corner players who have hit fewer home runs and kept their jobs than Alonso. From 2012 through 2016, when Alonso racked up over 2,200 plate appearances, he managed to launch all of 34 home runs, one fewer than Andrelton Simmons hit during that same time period. James Loney hit seven more home runs than Alonso did during that stretch, and Loney was the probably the most Alonso-like first baseman in baseball; James Loney also just got released from his minor league contract over the weekend, if you’re curious about league-wide interest in low-power first baseman on the wrong side of 30.

But low-power first baseman apparently doesn’t describe Alonso anymore, as he’s currently tied (with Bryce Harper, among others) for ninth on the 2017 home run leaderboard. His .356 ISO ranks even better, putting him fifth overall, one spot ahead of Harper. Yeah, it’s early, but Alonso is showing every characteristic of a guy who revamped his approach and might have salvaged his career.

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When Xander Bogaerts was climbing the prospect rankings back in 2013, he was billed as an offense-first shortstop, a guy who would probably end up growing out of the position early in his career, but would have the power to become a top flight third baseman. In summarizing their write-up as the Red Sox top prospect after the 2013 season, Baseball America wrote that Bogaerts should develop into “a likely peak of 25-plus homers a year in the middle of the lineup.” In other write-ups, they noted his “plus plus raw power”, and the questions about his value were almost always tied to his defensive abilities.

Bogaerts, now 24, is coming off back to back +4 WAR seasons, and as a 24-year-old, he’s established himself as one of the best young players in baseball. But he’s also turned himself into something like the complete opposite of what he was billed to be as a prospect.

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Yesterday, the Rangers announced that they’d be without Cole Hamels for the next couple of months, as he recovers from an oblique strain that was probably why he was pitching so poorly. A few hours later, they played the Astros in the third game of their four game series, and just like the previous two nights, they lost.

And they didn’t just lose; they got pounded 10-1, pushing them eight full games behind Houston in the AL West race. Now 11-17, the Rangers have the fourth-worst record in baseball, and their playoff odds have taken a nosedive; we currently are giving them just a 10% chance to reach the postseason.

And while it’s early enough to turn their season around, the disastrous first month of the season, paired with significant injuries to Hamels and Adrian Beltre, make it more likely that the Rangers are going to enter July in a precarious position. With some improvements from some key players, it’s not that hard to see this team making a late-season comeback, as they did a couple of years ago, to dig out of this big early hole and still put themselves in Wild Card position. But before they get there, the team will have to convince the front office to keep the roster together, and in particular, to ignore the numerous calls they’ll certainly be receiving on Yu Darvish.

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Yesterday, I wrote about the Nationals’ upcoming decision in the wake of the Adam Eaton injury, talking about the pros and cons of sticking with an inferior option like Michael Taylor or making a big splash for a rental like Lorenzo Cain. In both the comments of the post and at the Pitch Talks show in D.C. last night, a number of people questioned why I focused solely on the potential acquisition of a CF, and didn’t talk about the possibility of acquiring a shortstop and shifting Trea Turner to center field as they did a year ago.

The idea seems to be fairly popular, and would expand the pool of players the Nationals could look at, putting them in a better position to upgrade without having to pay an extreme price due to the lack of quality center field options. But here’s the primary reason I didn’t devote any words to the idea in yesterday’s piece.

In theory, if Taylor doesn’t pan out, Harper could slide over to center field, where he spent most of his rookie season. Alternatively, Turner — who converted to center last year before returning to his native shortstop this season — could head back to the outfield. For the record, Baker doesn’t seem terribly interested in either of those contingency plans.

“No,” said the Nats skipper dismissively when asked on Saturday morning if he was open to the idea of Harper or Turner taking over in center field. “Leave my team alone.”

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In some ways, the Nationals just finished up a great week. In the last seven days, they scored 77 runs, running a team batting line of .355/.423/.649 and a wRC+ of 175. For reference, Mike Trout’s best single-season wRC+ is 176. If you wanted to know what a line-up of nine Mike Trouts would look like, it would look something like the Nationals line-up of last week.

But beyond the results on the field, the Nationals had a terrible week, as on Friday, Adam Eaton’s knee gave out running through a close play at first base, and the postgame diagnosis confirmed the worst; a torn ACL that will sideline him for the rest of the season. The Nationals’ big winter acquisition, and one that cost them a significant chunk of the upper-levels of their farm system, Eaton was off to a strong start at the plate and had helped the team to a commanding early lead in the NL East.

Now, though, the team is roughly back to where they were at the beginning of last winter, with enough talent to see themselves as legitimate contenders, but with enough holes to not necessarily be seen as a favorite when October rolls around. As we noted before the season began, the Nationals have a depth problem, and so with Eaton on the shelf, the team will now turn to Michael Taylor and his career 69 wRC+ to hold down center field for at least the next few months. Taylor’s probably not a guy you want to be starting in October, and having him as the starting CF means he can’t fill in for Jayson Werth, who may remember that he’s 38 at any moment.

Given the team’s current options, it’s entirely possible that they could end up starting not only Taylor, but also Chris Heisey, in some important playoff games, and while the top of the line-up is pretty great, you don’t really want to be starting multiple guys of this ilk in October. And if any of the infielders get hurt, you’re tossing in a Stephen Drew here or a Wilmer Difo there, and a vaunted line-up can quickly start to look pretty thin.

So, the natural reaction to Eaton’s injury would be to make a trade to fill the gap. The team saw center field as a big enough weakness to surrender Lucas Gilioto, Reynaldo Lopez, and Dane Dunning six months ago, so they probably shouldn’t be willing to roll with the pre-Eaton status quo now. But making a deal is now more difficult than it was over the winter, and there’s a rational argument to be made that enough else has change to disincentivize the team from making another big all-in trade.

Let’s tackle that second point first. While it is certainly too early to be hatching any chickens, the Nationals strong start in April, combined with a pretty disastrous first month in New York, has significantly improved the team’s odds of making the postseason. While we saw the Nationals as the likely division winner on Opening Day, the Mets were a strong contender as well, and their presence left enough room for our forecasts to say that there was something like a 1-in-3 chance the Nationals wouldn’t win the NL East. As we stand here on May 1st, however, the 17-8 Nationals are already 6 1/2 games ahead of the 10-14 Mets, and the primary in-division challengers just saw their ace walk off the mound with an arm problem a few days after their best hitter was sent to the DL with a nagging hamstring issue.

So now, even without Eaton, the big early lead and the Mets health issues have combined to push the Nationals division odds up to 88%, so that 1-in-3 chance of not winning the division is now something like 1-in-9. The Nationals have a big enough cushion that they probably can run Taylor out there for the next five months and still win this thing, probably comfortably. So now, the question is more about how much you surrender to get a better player in the line-up in October.

Certainly, you want to put the best team on the field you can in order to give your team the best chance in the postseason, but the randomness of the playoffs can’t be understated. If you make another big trade for a center field upgrade, you’re hoping that the guy you acquire hits well for maybe 50 at-bats, and it can be a tough sell to give up a significant piece of the team’s future for the hope that you get a few good weeks out of a guy at the end of the year.

Which brings us to the difficulty of making a trade to begin with. Put simply, it doesn’t look like the market is teeming with potentially-available center fielders. Several rebuilding or potential sellers signed their center fielders to long-term extensions over the winter, taking Ender Inciarte, Odubel Herrera, and Kevin Kiermaier officially off the market. A few others who will likely be selling at the deadline have big weaknesses in CF too, as you’re not going to be hitting up teams like the White Sox for CF help.

Realistically, it looks like the best CF who is probably a good bet to get moved this summer is Lorenzo Cain. The Royals are off to a lousy 7-16 start, and with a bunch of guys heading into free agency this winter, they can’t afford to keep everyone together for the stretch run and hope a late-season revival makes up for their slow start. Cain wouldn’t replace Eaton at the plate, but he’s a better defender, and would put the the Nationals roughly back where they were in overall talent level before Eaton’s knee gave out.

But to land Cain, Mike Rizzo would have to outbid every other contender looking for a CF, and the Royals aren’t going to just give Cain away, given that he’s one of their best trade chips at the moment. And since the Eaton trade removed most of their high-level arms, you’re now looking at a small group of names that every other team is going to be asking for: Victor Robles, Juan Soto, and Erick Fedde, most likely. Eric ranked Robles as the #8 prospect in baseball before the season, so he should be off limits for a rental, but Soto and Fedde are both Top 100 material, and giving them up for a hoped-for October upgrade could also be a tough pill to swallow.

In the end, Rizzo and his staff will have to decide whether they want to push in as far as possible to try and win in the next two years, while they still have Bryce Harper around, or if they think they are better off trying to build a sustained winner even after Harper likely leaves. After all, it’s not like this a team clearly headed for a cliff where a win-at-all-costs posture is clearly correct. Trea Turner looks like a franchise player, Robles could be as well, and the team has long-term guarantees to Stephen Strasburg and Max Scherzer. Eaton is still around. They’ll still have Anthony Rendon in 2019. If the Nationals don’t give up a Robles or a Soto this summer, they could reasonably think that their window could extend past Harper’s time in Washington, especially if the money he might otherwise get is reallocated in free agency.

But that puts them right back where they’ve been the last few years; entering the postseason as a good-but-flawed team that probably would need some things to break their way to take down the Cubs or Dodgers in the playoffs. And after going out in the first round in three of the last five years, it’s only natural to want to avoid another early elimination because you gave the other team four easy outs a game by starting Michael Taylor in the postseason.

The May-September Nationals probably don’t need to replace Eaton. The rest of the team is good enough to likely hold on to their division lead, especially with the Mets in a somewhat chaotic state.

The October Nationals, however, could certainly use a guy like Cain, especially if he came along with a bullpen upgrade like Kelvin Herrera. But that’s not going to be a low-cost acquisition, and it’s not an easy call to give up big parts of the remaining farm system for the hope that these guys are significant upgrades in just a handful of games in the postseason. If you give up a Robles or a Soto to land another 2017 upgrade, in addition to what you already gave up to get Eaton, you’re probably setting yourself up for a rebuild after 2018, especially with Philadelphia and Atlanta poised to be contenders at that time.

Maybe it’s best to not worry about the future while you have a generational talent like Harper, and just try to push in on the next two years, accepting that there will be some losing seasons down the line. If you go out in the first round because Lorenzo Cain didn’t hit in October, well, at least you tried. But while a noble feeling, surrendering big parts of a team’s future for a bet on October performance alone remains a risky bet, and could set up the organization to have some long-term pain without any real guarantee of short-term benefit.

With the Eaton trade, the Nationals tried to thread the needle of contending both now and in the future. They gave up a lot to get him, but landed a young player with long-term control who could make them better without feeling like they sacrificed the future. Unless Kevin Pillar’s April power surge is for real, there doesn’t appear to be another Eaton-type out there, so this time, the Nationals will have to make a more clear choice. Do they push in on their Harper window, potentially sacrificing what’s left of the long-term future of the organization in the process, or try to make another playoff run with a good-not-great roster?

It’s not an obvious call. I think either decision could be defended, and since they have a big early lead, the organization can take a few months to see what Taylor can do, and whether he can convince them to not make a big trade for a CF in July. But if he’s just the Michael Taylor we’ve seen the last few years, it’s going to be tough for the team to feel comfortable with their outfield headed into the postseason, and if the Royals sweeten the pot with a guy like Herrera, it might be too tempting to avoid giving the team their best chance to win while Harper is still launching home runs in the nation’s capitol.

On Tuesday, I ran a poll, asking what you would pay Eric Thames now, given what he’s done to MLB pitching — and the Reds — over the first three weeks of the season. When asked what kind of annual salary you’d agree to under the same three year term that he signed this winter, a majority of the responders (56%) selected $11-$15 million per year. The weighted average of all the votes came out to just under $15 million, so the crowd estimated that a fair three-year contract for Thames now would be something like $45 million.

And while I think there are valid concerns about the lack of information we have concerning how Thames will adjust as the league adjusts to him, I still think that number is overly conservative. If I were tasked with crafting an offer for Thames at this point, and followed the same constraint that he was only accepting three year offers to put it on the same scale as the one he signed this winter, I’d offer him the Edwin Encarnacion deal: $60 million over three years.

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