A few more thoughts on the ballclub as they fly off to the Bay:

• No one seemed to have a solid stance within the Pirates' clubhouse today at PNC Park -- or their broader orbit, for that matter -- as to what's looming at Major League Baseball's trade deadline Thursday, though there was one spoken above all: Don't be trading Mitch Keller.

Not just because he's a tenured and popular player, but also because he's really good. And when it's Keller and Paul Skenes taking on any opponent anywhere, provided there's some support added by a competent GM, that's a dual weapon few teams will have.

Myself, I still can't see Ben Cherington being allowed to make trades of such magnitude.

• Really, the whole scenario blows my mind. It's stunning that he's still on the job.

• That aside, trading a Keller or a David Bednar doesn't do a damned thing to make the team better. Stop putting the onus on parting with baseball assets and start ponying up.

Under a GM who can recognize hitting talent, of course.

• I'm not into preemptive criticism, as a general rule, but let's lay this out right now: If any of Keller, Bryan Reynolds or Ke'Bryan Hayes get traded, everyone can feel free to bet every dollar they hold that those will be motivated partly, if not mostly, by money. (This despite Cherington's denial today that salaries will be a factor.) Which would really stink, to say the least.

• The Pirates are 44-62 after beating the Diamondbacks today, 6-0, but they're absolutely abominable on the road at 13-37, and they're about to take on the contending Giants in San Francisco. Seems fair to bring up, even after a 5-1 finish to a homestand that opened with three straight Ls to the White Sox.

Never get carried away with positives related to this operation, but yeah, that's a little resilience.

• Loved this line from Oneil Cruz on that subject afterward: "You see the way our team is playing. Hard baseball."

• His 270-foot, 9-second tour of the final three bases in the second inning was breathtaking to witness. Even though there's really nothing that he does physically that surprises.

• So Skenes gets through a clean first inning and his teammates come up to bat for a five-pitch bottom half. That was it, 1-2-3 in a matter of a minute. I couldn't help but ask:

Don Kelly noticed and praised Skenes for his composure in getting through the subsequent inning that saw Arizona's Jake McCarthy launch a one-out triple to the Notch: "That's great work there by Paul. Not easy to do that."

• Skenes isn't a complainer, but he made multiple mentions of the heat, which rose to a feels-like 100 degrees by 5 p.m. Asked, for instance, how he felt on the mound: "I felt hot."

• I promised Reynolds, after his 1-for-3 day that made for a 1-for-12 series against Arizona despite lots of well-struck baseballs, that I'd look up his luck factor for the season, so here's that: His .300 BABIP -- batting average on all balls in play -- is the exact average, to the decimal point, that demonstrates a hitter's neither lucky nor unlucky.

Sorry, dude. Hit 'em where they ain't, I guess.

• Man, Jack Suwinski's average actually dropped below .100 at one point in this game, going 1 for 4, but that one hit came in the final at-bat and raised him up to ... .111. Tough to watch. To his credit, he's at least trying to keep his chin up, but that can't be easy.

• Awesome to see Caleb Ferguson, who finally hit his first rough patch of 2025 late this month, come through with two perfect appearances against Arizona.

• The Diamondbacks, by the way, totaled one run -- and a cheesy Rob Manfred run in the 11th inning Friday, to boot -- and 14 hits over 29 innings. There was a ton of talk on that side about trades being a distraction, but that's also about strong pitching.

• Remember when we could talk about baseball like this regularly? Rather than the remainder of a season being rendered moot by, oh, mid-April?

Been a while.

Back to football.