How did the Padres go from underachieving to surging into the NLCS? It starts a

SAN DIEGO — One month before Saturday, before Joe Musgrove started what his childhood idol predicted could be this city’s biggest sporting event in two decades, the Padres played an awful baseball game. A rookie pitcher making his big-league debut blanked them for seven innings. The offense finished with three hits, one walk and no runs. San Diego’s tenuous hold on a wild-card spot slipped even further. Afterward, inside the visiting clubhouse at Chase Field, manager Bob Melvin upbraided the team for its lack of intensity, surprising some in the room with an uncharacteristic outpouring of frustration.

“It was a little shocking, not in a bad way,” Musgrove said. “But just, we hadn’t heard that side of him or seen that side of him.”

Melvin, a stoic but decidedly competitive man, had seen enough. The Padres had gone 37-42 over the past three months. They had weathered Fernando Tatis Jr.’s season-long absence and his jarring suspension. But they had not played up to their still-considerable talent. Despite a gaudy payroll, they were providing little reason to believe a deep October run — or, for that matter, any kind of run — was possible.

That night in Arizona was not the first time Melvin had expressed his displeasure. In late July, following a lopsided defeat in Detroit, he “came in and basically ripped us for losing to a bad team,” veteran reliever Craig Stammen recalled. Yet Melvin, pushed to the brink after the latest in a string of listless performances, reserved his most pointed message for Sept.