In baseball, playing at home is supposed to be the great un-equalizer. Feast while sleeping in your own bed. Refresh and reinvigorate with short commutes and fans screaming until opponents melt in their overheated spikes.

It’s not that way for the Padres. Not this season. Not so far.

The cellar-dwelling Diamondbacks dodged a sweep the Padres sorely could have used Sunday as mental salve and a springboard into the All-Star break after weeks of struggling. The 3-1 loss illustrated, well, the Padres’ problems at Petco Park.

“It’s disappointing that we don’t play well in front of, you know, a big crowd every night,” manager Bob Melvin said. “You’d think that would be to our advantage and it has not been. At some point in time, you’d think it would even out. Hopefully, it does in the second half.

“But it’s been a little bit of a mystery.”

Even after the Padres won twice over the weekend, only the Brewers stand fewer games over .500 at home (two) among the top two teams in each division. The Padres? With a $209 million payroll and starting pitching depth that’s among the best in the game?

Four over. Four. The wheels continue to spin at a place where there have been 17 sellouts so far, second most at Petco since 24 in the honeymoon season of 2004.

Leg-cutting offensive flailing has now been joined by sloppiness, especially in recent weeks at home, where they are just 25-21.

“The fans have been great and we appreciate everything they’re doing,” said designated hitter Luke Voit, who provided the sole run with a 413-foot shot to the second deck of left field’s Western Metal Supply Co. building in the seventh inning.

“We don’t know what’s going on at home. It needs to change.”

Melvin and Voit separately said Petco Park has become one of the hardest places to slug and generate power, with the player calling it “the toughest in the big-leagues right now.”

ESPN’s “park factors” seems to agree, ranking Petco dead last in terms of places to double, the 26th hardest in which to triple and bottom-third in home runs. Marine layer? Barometric pressure? Carne asada smoke?

Whatever it might be, the Padres feel it mentally as much as statistically.

“The ball doesn’t carry as much here, but we’re not really a power team right now,” Melvin said. “… We just haven’t played well enough at home. We need to play better at home if we’re going to go where we want to go.”

So far, home-field-advantage logic has been sidelined as long as Fernando Tatis Jr.

In just three fewer games at home entering Sunday, the Padres’ average was .256 away from Petco and .224 inside the supposedly comfy confines. The OPS, 87 points lower. Runs and RBIs, 83 less. Outside of San Diego, the Padres owned 109 more hits and 10 more home runs.

Standing 10 games over .500 without Tatis calls for deep breaths, but this team cannot lean on that convenient crutch.

“Our offense has been so up and down,” Voit said. “We haven’t clicked at all. We just need to take this (break), refresh and get things going when we come back. We need to play better at home. Hopefully, it’s just a fluke and we can overcome that.”

Fan frustration crescendoed in the seventh, when suddenly wobbly MacKenzie Gore erased just one of the four hitters he faced, walking Josh Rojas on four pitches to load the bases.

Reliever Steven Wilson immediately walked two of the three hitters he faced. Two more runs. The boos rained down.

The Padres wasted yet another strong, winnable effort from a starter. Mike Clevinger gave up one run, a home run from David Peralta in the sixth, striking out eight and walking two.

Offensively and again, the Padres stitched together three singles in an inning at home recently without scratching across a run. This lap came in the second, ending with Eric Hosmer being cut down at home by right fielder Daulton Varsho to staunch the threat.

The Padres put the lead runner on base only once in the first six innings on Jurickson Profar’s double in the third. If not for one swing from Voit, the Padres would have mounted no meaningful offense at all.

The Padres need to significantly edit the old saying, “Home is where the heart is.” The rest of 2022, it needs to become “Home is where the hurt is.”

If not, October might hurt most of all.

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