SAN DIEGO — Joe Musgrove stepped outside the home dugout some 30 minutes before first pitch. He walked past Victor Caratini playing catch in shallow center field, past the opposing pitcher already stretching near the warning track, to prepare for his first start in 11 days.
He’d done plenty of heavy lifting in between, resetting the San Diego Padres’ bullpen with five no-hit innings in Houston in lieu of a scheduled start in Chicago.
He could not do nearly enough of it Saturday night.
Matched up with Mets ace Jacob deGrom, Musgrove blinked first — via solo homers from Jose Peraza and Francisco Lindor in the fifth — and was chased in the sixth of a 4-0 loss that snapped a franchise-record 12-game winning streak at home.
Against deGrom, this one was going to be tough to extend from the get-go.
Allowing scoring chances to slip through their fingers in the second, fourth and sixth innings was especially exasperating because the two-time NL Cy Young-winner had allowed just four earned runs through his first 51 innings.
Fernando Tatis Jr. notched the first of three hits allowed by deGrom with a first-pitch ball that veered past first baseman Pete Alonso to open the second inning. The Padres shortstop stretched the hit into a double, sliding into second just ahead of Billy McKinney’s throw from right field to give his teammates three opportunities to push him home.
Instead, Eric Hosmer popped out to left, Wil Myers grounded out to Lindor and Tucupita Marcano tapped out to deGrom. Tatis also walked with two outs in the six and swiped second only to have deGrom punch out Hosmer to end the inning.
Neither of those chances were as threatening as the fourth, when a Lindor error on a grounder from Tatis helped load the bases.
Jake Cronenworth’s one-out single cracked the door open, Tatis reached on the gaffe and Hosmer lofted a ball to shallow left that would have scored Cronenworth had he been sure that Dominic Smith would not come up with a sliding catch.
Smith did not, but Cronenworth held up between second and third and even retreated briefly before settling for just one base on Hosmer’s single.
You know what they say about hindsight.
DeGrom struck out Myers and Marcano to escape the jam, two of the 11 punchouts he piled up in seven shutout innings to lower his ERA to a minuscule 0.62.
The Padres’ frustration appeared to boil over in the eighth when, after Tommy Pham greeted reliever Seth Lugo with a single to start the eighth, Jurickson Profar slammed his bat at the plate after looking at strike three on the inside corner to end an eight-pitch at-bat.
Hunter Wendelstedt immediately tossed Profar, who traded arm gestures with the plate umpire before stalking off to the dugout with his first career ejection.
Musgrove dealt with quite a bit more traffic in five-plus innings.
McKinney’s leadoff double off the right-field wall was the first hit that Musgrove had allowed since Lorenzo Cain’s one-out single in the fifth inning on May 25 in Milwaukee, the heart of a stretch in which he allowed three hits, walked one and struck out 20 over 16 2/3 innings.
The Padres won both starts, although the Brewers pushed him out of the May 25 game one out before he qualified for the win.
They lost his five-inning, no-hit relief appearance on May 30 because they were already down seven runs when he jogged in from the bullpen, and ultimately the next three games at Wrigley Field.
The real win?
The bullpen was reset after covering innings in a franchise-record four straight extra-inning games.
Innings-eaters like Nabill Crismatt were saved to and from trips from Triple-A El Paso.
Everyone could take a step back.
“A huge help,” MLB saves leader Mark Melancon said Saturday afternoon. “That was a day we all needed a breather. So many extra-inning games, Joe stepped up and just dominated.”
Like he did after McKinney’s leadoff double to start Saturday’s matchup with deGrom.
The next two batters — Lindor and Pete Alonso — punched out and Smith flied out to center.
DeGrom’s bouncer to second base stranded Travis Blankenhorn’s two-out double in the second.
Musgrove punched out the side in the third inning and struck out Blankenhorn with runners on first and second to escape the fourth with his team still locked in a scoreless game.
It was not all that surprising for a number of reasons. The Mets lineup that entered the game ranked 30th in runs scored (182), 29th in slugging (.359), 21st in batting average (.230) and 18th in on-base percentage (.310).
But Peraza’s solo shot with one out of the fifth was enough to put deGrom in control of the game.
Lindor added his own blast before the end of the inning and one of the two runners that Musgrove put on base to start the sixth scored on pinch-hitter Jonathan Villar’s single off Tim Hill.
The Mets added a fourth run off Crismatt in the ninth, his second inning of work.
