Dodgers’ loss over before it starts

SAN DIEGO -- Brad Penny had his pregame routine disrupted again, this time on a day when he had to be almost perfect.

Penny didn’t blame his mangled warmup session for the four runs he gave up in the first inning of the Dodgers’ 4-1 loss to the San Diego Padres on Saturday at Petco Park, but he also didn’t conceal his irritation at finding no catcher waiting for him in the bullpen.

“Nobody was out there,” Penny said.

Reduced to playing catch with a fan he picked out of the stands, Penny (1-1) started the game by handing Jake Peavy a cushion that essentially put victory out of the Dodgers’ reach. Peavy (2-0) mastered the visitors with a two-hitter, retiring 17 of the last 19 batters, including 10 in a row in one stretch.

“He has this invisible ball,” Dodgers center fielder Andruw Jones said. “The spin on the ball, it’s tough to pick up the rotations.”

But not as tough as warming up alone.

Penny, who five days earlier was forced to extend his warmup session because of an opening-day ceremony at Dodger Stadium that ran longer than expected, this time had to postpone it because there wasn’t a catcher in sight.

Penny tried to convince an usher to toss the ball with him. He was turned down.

He tried a groundskeeper next and received a similar answer.

Penny eventually found his man in the box seats, playing catch in right field for a few minutes until a bullpen catcher arrived.

“He could catch pretty good,” Penny said of the middle-aged man whose name he never learned.

Asked if this was the first time he had done something like that, Penny said, “Yeah, usually people are out there on time.”

Penny said he didn’t think he pitched poorly in that decisive first inning, singling out a fastball he left over the plate to Adrian Gonzalez as the only bad pitch he made. Gonzalez’s hit to center was the second of six singles in the inning for the Padres.

Jim Edmonds, activated from the disabled list before the game, capped the inning by scoring on a hard-hit grounder by Josh Bard that third baseman Blake DeWitt failed to backhand and went in the books as a hit.

“He very easily could’ve gone away after that first inning, but he held it there for five more innings,” Manager Joe Torre said of Penny.

Penny limited the Padres to four hits over the next five innings.

But Peavy was mowing the Dodgers down in what looked like effortless fashion. He struck out the side in the first and retired the first nine batters he faced.

Bard, who caught Peavy, said the reigning Cy Young Award winner threw more changeups than usual.

“It gives him another pitch,” Bard said. “There are a couple guys on this team, [Jeff] Kent and [Russell] Martin, who have seen his slider a lot. It’s still the best slider in the game, but sometimes they’re cheating for it. We threw a wrinkle in there.”

Torre helped the Dodgers score their only run in the fourth inning when he alerted the umpires of the obscure Rule 7.04c, which states, “Each runner, other than the batter, may without liability to be put out, advance one base when . . . a fielder, after catching a fly ball, falls into a bench or stand, or falls across ropes into a crowd when spectators are on the field.”

The recognition of the rule allowed Rafael Furcal to go from third to home when Martin fouled out to Bard, who slid into the Padres’ dugout after catching the ball.

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dylan.hernandez@latimes.com