25 things we want to do with Jose Fernandez's slider

Holy strikeouts, Batman! Did you see Jose Fernandez's start on Thursday? The Marlins ace was on the hill for just the second time since returning from elbow surgery that cut his 2014 season way short (not that you could tell).

Fernandez tossed seven shutout innings, scattering just six hits while striking out nine Reds, most impresively with his slider, which looked more devastating than we remembered:

Fernandez calls the pitch a slider, but it definitely looks like it's got a little more curve in there than it did before the surgery. Slider, curve, slurve: whatever you want to call it, we think we're in love with it.

As we watched him send the ninth Reds batter packing on Thursday, we caught ourselves doodling its name on our Trapper Keeper and started to make a list of all the things we'd like to do with it. In an effort to be more honest with ourselves, we've decided to share that list with the world ("secrets, secrets are no fun" and all that).

Be gentle.

- Slip a note into its locker to find out if it like likes us back

- Take it out to dinner and sit on the same side of the booth

- Watch the same show on Netflix at the same time while talking on the phone when we have to spend a night apart

- Give our phones to our friends to stop us from texting it too soon after our last date

- Do that thing when you intertwine your arms and drink at the same time

- Finish its meal when it can't eat all of what it ordered for dinner

- Take it to a pet store and fantasize about getting a dog and naming it something weird and baseball-related. Like Benny "The Jet" Rodriguez or Splitter or Hornsby

- Bring it home to meet our parents

- Make it a mixtape full of b-sides from pseudo punk outfits of the early aughts

- Coordinate couple's costumes for a Halloween party/costume contest

- Play hooky and spend the day museum hopping

- Surprise it with breakfast in bed

- Celebrate our anniversary by going back to that same restaurant from our first date and sitting on the same side of the same booth

- Road trip to a drive-in in New Jersey to see an old black-and-white movie

- Invent different stories about how we met every time someone asks us how we met

- Host a couples pot-luck and wow everyone with our classic meatloaf cupcakes topped with mashed potatoes

- Jog through the parking lot and pull the car around to pick it up in a torrential downpour

- Make one of those fortune tellers out of a piece of loose leaf paper and rig it to say we're going to get married and move to the Cape

- Decide where to go on vacation with it by showing up at the airport and picking a flight off the "Departures" board

- Put our cell phones on the same family plan

- Spend a Sunday morning listening to Otis Redding records and doing the New York Times crossword

- Pretend to be embarassed when people find out that we have horrifyingly adorable nicknames for each other

- Go antiquing in coal country

- Post love notes to each other's Facebook walls even though we're in the same room just to flaunt our love in front of everyone who knows us

- Move in together even though its grandparents are old fashioned and probably don't approve of us living that kind of lifestyle

Listen, we know we're probably coming on a little strong here, but ball's in your court, Jose Fernandez's slider. Coffee? Drinks? Dinner? Feel free to slide into our DMs whenever works for you.

Additional reporting by MLB.com's Joe Frisaro