Friends since one managed the other in New York in the ‘90s, Buck Showalter and Bob Melvin figure to speak often this offseason. They certainly did last year as they settled into their gigs in Queens and San Diego, respectively. If ear-gate becomes a topic of conversation — “Joe Musgrove is a man of character,” Melvin said Sunday night — the two will almost certainly keep that between them.

Only one thing came up between the two managers Sunday night.

“Look, he texted me congratulations after the game and I thanked him,” Melvin said before a Monday afternoon workout at Dodger Stadium. “We have another series coming up here, so for me that’s kind of water under the bridge.”

Maybe in the Padres’ clubhouse.

Still, a day later the baseball world was abuzz about Showalter having crew chief Alfonso Marquez essentially massage Musgrove’s ears on national television in search of some sort of sticky substance to explain the uptick in the right-hander’s spin rate.

Social media. Sports talk on the radio and TV. Shoot, even the Dodgers took notice as the umpire check played out during a team dinner at The Palm.

“It got a little louder in the room,” Dodgers first baseman Freddie Freeman said while laughing during Monday’s media availability.

Perhaps lost in the all the chatter is the reasons for Showalter’s check was a trend occurring on his own staff. To say nothing of Musgrove’s elevated spin rate — until his last couple starts, Musgrove had been off his game, so to speak, since landing on the COVID list in June — Trevor May’s four-seamer jumped by 184 RPMs on Sunday and David Peterson’s slider, four-seamer and change-up were all up by more than 200 RPMs.

For comparison’s sake, Musgrove’s spikes ranged from 105 RPMs on his sinker to 248 on his slider.

Perhaps it’s about what’s at stake.

The hometown kid took the ball in a winner-take-all game, his velocity jumped across the board — especially his change-up and that’s not what anyone wants — and the spin did, too.

In fact, the jump in Musgrove’s average spin rate on Sunday (5.7 percent) compared with the leaguewide average increase (5.5 percent) so far in the postseason, according to ESPN’s Paul Hembekides.

“Velo is up across the board (in the postseason),” Melvin said. “You’re seeing higher spin rates. It has a lot to do with pitching in the postseason.”

Unlike these Padres, the 2021 Braves weren’t wild cards. They were an 88-win team that wound up on top of a bad division. But they got hot at the right time, even without their superstar, upended a juggernaut in the NLCS and surprised everyone by hoisting the Commissioner’s Trophy at the end of the tournament.

If anyone knows not to overlook the Padres, it’s Freeman, now the first baseman on the behemoth instead of the underdog.

“I don’t think anyone in this room picked the Padres to beat the Mets,” Freeman said. “… Like last year, no one picked us to win anything. So really there’s no pressure. You just have to go out there and play the game. I think when you have that mentality, you go out there and you have nothing to lose and everyone just talks about the other team, so it’s kind of easy to just go out there and just play your game.”

He added: “They’re hot, and we’ve been hot for seven months.”

Not that that, or even the head-to-head success that L.A. owns in the series, matters.

“No one cares that we won 111 games starting tomorrow,” Freeman said, “or what the head-to-head matchups were during the season. It’s what you can do tomorrow, the next day and the next day.”

For all of Trent Grisham’s struggles throughout the 2022 season, the Mets throwing three righties in New York made him and his Gold Glove an easy start in center field. The Dodgers are starting the best-of-five NLDS with their best two lefties (Julio Urias and Clayton Kershaw), figure to have left-hander Tyler Anderson in the conversation for Game 3 and will certainly make use of lefty Andrew Heaney at some point.

Fine. After the weekend he had in Queens, the left-handed-hitting Grisham remains the preferred choice in center field over right-handed rookie Jose Azocar.

“He has had a history of hitting lefties — actually some years better,” Melvin said. “It’s just all about how the quality of his at-bats are and what he means to us. He certainly had a great series both at the plate and in the field. Even if production-wise was done a little, he still makes up for it on the defensive end and on the run end as well. I expect him to be out there, yes.”

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