More so than usual, the baseball seemed to jump out of Mason Miller’s hand Wednesday afternoon.

Seven straight fastballs hissed at 101 to 103 mph. Sliders slashed through the air.

Enhancing the speed show was the 6-foot-5 closer’s elongated delivery. It seemed the ball went half the distance before hitting the mitt.

A thought arose in the press box as Miller made big leaguers look like Little Leaguers

You’d have to be insane to trade this guy. Completely cuckoo.

“Well, it’s not up to you and me,” Miller said following the Padres’ 3-1 win in the East Village.

A.J. Preller will decide and, whew, it now looks like the crazy outcome won’t happen.

It appears the Padres, winners of five in a row, will keep baseball’s uber-closer and other attractive trade candidates past the trade deadline Monday afternoon

Giving Preller more reason to buy than to sell, the Padres (55-53) now sit just 1 1/2 games behind the Diamondbacks (57-52) and the tumbling Phillies (57-52) for the second and third spots.

Just six days ago, the picture was darkening fast.

When the Padres took a third loss in Atlanta that day, a selloff was becoming not unrealistic, what with the team sitting three games under .500 after losing five of seven to begin a critical three-city trip.

Accustomed to Miller saving them, other Padres may have saved themselves some unpleasantness by sweeping the Marlins in three road games and now the Rockies in two.

Now they’ll face the Giants four times at Petco Park, then head to Phoenix, and it sure looks like Miller will accompany them.

Best of all Wednesday for the Padres and another sellout crowd, the bulk-inning pitchers fared well. Kyle Hart and Griffin Canning, whose roles were inverted, totaled 5 2/3 scoreless innings to further reward the creative tactics adopted recently by manager Craig Stammen, pitching coach Ruben Niebla and bullpen coach Ben Fritz.

Rather than asking a starter pitcher other than Michael King or Walker Buehler to complete five innings, the Padres are having Canning and others work two to four innings apiece.

The left-handed Hart threw strikes at a high rate, leading to his 2 2/3 scoreless innings as the starter.

Canning induced much chasing from Rockies hitters, sending a 3-0 lead to the game’s final third.

The tactical shift has contributed to the five-game win streak.

“It’s not a traditional setup by any means,” Miller said, “but whether we’ve thrown the ball well or not over the course of the season, we do have a lot of guys that possess a lot of skills. So, putting them into situations that maybe don’t allow them to think as much and just rely on their abilities has been really good lately.

“You can’t run a bullpen game every single day,” added the closer, who started six games with the A’s. “But, if you have two guys that are covering 60, 70% of the game, that makes it a little more doable.”

Canning said he’s encouraged by how he’s felt in recent weeks, as he seeks to regain the form he displayed last year in pitching to a 3.77 ERA in 16 starts before a June Achilles injury led to surgery.

“I’ve felt good all year,” said the right-hander, who has a 6.65 ERA in 65 innings. “Maybe there were some things that were a little different. I do feel like when I hit that year mark, like, the end of June — they always say, once you get to a year, you’ll start feeling a little bit better — I did kind of feel that, once I got there. I think I created some bad habits in my delivery that I was working on, at the beginning of the year. But these last five, six outings, I feel pretty good ”

The Padres could’ve avoided having to call upon Miller to get his 28th save. But they didn’t score after scoring three runs in the fourth inning, without putting a hard shot into play.

Overall, it was a tidy performance.

Jake Cronenworth made an A-plus defensive play, throwing from his right knee on the grass directly behind second base to deny Cole Carrigg a single.

Canning picked off Carrigg after the San Diego State alum was plunked by a pitch to lead off the sixth.

“I saw him steal, first pitch, against Michael (King) yesterday, so I was kind of thinking he might be going,” Canning said.

The Padres will face a Giants team that recently lost one of its best hitters, SDSU alum Casey Schmitt, to a knee injury.

Miller will loom in a Padres bullpen that saw Jeremiah Estrada return from the injury list Wednesday and strike out three hitters.

Preller will stay busy, regardless of what happens in the next four days.

Had circumstances forced his hand, Preller would’ve been right to set a price on Miller in the trade market and see if a contender would’ve met it.

Now it appears we’ll never find out what the price would’ve been.

The Reaper, it seems, will be staying.