MILWAUKEE — The Padres were not beaten by Jacob Misiorowski.

But they were beaten.

Especially in the postseason, that squandered opportunity hurt.

Because after a 3-2 loss to the Brewers in Game 1 of the National League Division Series on Saturday night, the Padres need to win three of the next four games against the team that finished the regular season with the major leagues’ best record.

It hurt, too, because the Padres scored twice and got the world’s hardest-throwing pitcher off the mound after four innings, neutralizing what had been the Brewers’ biggest advantage and putting themselves in almost as favorable a position as could have been expected.

It also hurt, because the Brewers’ bullpen outlasted the Padres’ bullpen.

And it was an extra kind of spanking because the Brewers, who hit fewer home runs than all but one team during the regular season, scored all of their runs on a pair of homers.

It was William Contreras’ blast off Adrian Morejón with two outs in the seventh inning that broke a 2-2 tie, providing a rather sudden turn after a string of scoreless innings, and ended up deciding the outcome.

Not that a playoff game is supposed to be as easy as taking a lead and holding it.

But the ending seemed a particularly precipitous fall from the high of taking a 2-0 lead in the second inning against a pitcher who allowed more than one run in just 12 of his 30 starts.

The Padres lost their lead an inning-and-a-half after getting it and managed five hits over the final seven innings.

There is no guarantee that Walker Buehler would have fared better had he been available to start rather than in San Diego attending the birth of his second child.

But his substitute, Robbie Ray, lost the 2-0 lead the Padres gave him by surrendering a two-run homer to Jackson Chourio in the third inning.

And the Padres offense did better against the best pitcher in the NL and arguably in all of baseball than they did against the five pitchers who followed him on Saturday night.

Statistically, the Brewers’ relief corps is actually more effective in most areas than the Padres’.

Still, there were myriad missed opportunities after the Padres made Misiorowski throw 25 pitches in the first inning and then took a 2-0 lead in the second while the powerful right-hander threw another 33 pitches.

That quieted a crowd inside American Family Field that had been every bit as loud as Petco Park got earlier in the week.

So much so that when Manny Machado came to bat with the bases loaded, they hardly booed him in the place he is booed even more vociferously than he is in Los Angeles.

Machado, who had doubled with two outs in the first, ended the second with a groundout.

Misiorowski got through the third inning in nine pitches.

And when Chourio’s two-run homer cleared the wall and landed in a canopy over the Brewers’ bullpen in the bottom of the third, the crowd was back and the game was tied.

Ray would be gone before the inning was over, departing with the bases loaded and two away.

Rodriguez replaced Ray and got through the fourth inning before Yuki Matsui and Jason Adam worked an inning apiece.

Morejón took over in the seventh and got the first two outs on two pitches before leaving a full-count sinker, at 100 mph, up and over the outer third of the plate that Contreras sent 406 feet to right-center field.

And there is generally no tougher pitcher than Misiorowski, who is virtually certain to win the NL Cy Young Award after a season in which he posted an MLB-best 1.80 ERA and struck out 252 batters in just 174 2/3 innings.

His first pitch Saturday was the fastest ever thrown in a postseason game — a 104.8-mph four-seam fastball down the middle that Fernando Tatis Jr. watched. It broke the record of 104.5 mph that Misiorowski and Padres closer Mason Miller both reached last season.

After Tatis struck out in four pitches, Dustin Harris fouled off three two-strike pitches before grounding out on the ninth pitch he saw, and Machado fouled off a pair of two-strike pitches before lining a slider the other way on the eighth pitch he saw for a double.

Ty France struck out to end the first. But after Ray took just seven pitches in a 1-2-3 bottom of the first, the Padres strung together three one-out singles to begin their two-run second.

Xander Bogaerts got the Padres started in the second inning by sending to the hole at shortstop and beating out the throw from Cooper Pratt. Ethan Salas followed with a single lined to center field, and Luis Campusano then drilled a grounder just inside the bag and down the right field line for a single that scored Bogaerts from second base and got Salas to third.

Salas scored the second run on a grounder by Jake Cronenworth that first baseman Jake Bauers bobbled, picked up and chose to throw home. Salas appeared to beat the throw, but it was moot because catcher William Contreras had the ball get away from him.

Fernando Tatis Jr. made the second out on a grounder back to Misiorowski before Dustin Harris walked to load the bases and bring up Machado, who hit the first pitch he saw to Pratt at shortstop.

The Padres got runners to second and third with two outs in the fifth, loaded the bases with two outs in the seventh and had runners on first and second with one out in the eighth.

Brewers closer Trevor Megill came in to strike out Tatis, ending that threat, and then survived Harris’ leadoff single in the ninth.

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