Despite being a big-leaguer who makes eight figures a year, Joe Musgrove is about as relatable as they come.

The El Cajon native grew up watching Dodgers fans overtake the Padres faithful at Qualcomm Stadium and later in the East Village. He’s a season-ticket holder now, too, so he understands why the crowds this weekend at Petco Park felt a bit more like the pre-2020 era of this rivalry than a team ranking second in average attendance this season and last season.

“I think it’s our season-ticket holders selling the tickets,” Musgrove said Sunday morning. “I’m not going to tell somebody that can make a lot of money or get some of their money back by selling tickets not to, but I think that’s the main reason. It seems like all of our fans that show up for every other series of the year and fill it out seem to sell their tickets when these series come around.”

Musgrove said Saturday night “was out of control. It was like the most I’ve ever seen Dodger fans in our stadium — 90% Dodgers fans.”

Petco Park averaged 42,434 fans per game last year and was sitting at 41,439 per game coming into Sunday. Both figures rank behind only Dodger Stadium (49,536 and 50,872 in 2025 and 2026, respectively) for most in the majors.

Crowds of 43,153 and 45,159 on Friday and Saturday easily trumped attendance for the Dodgers series here in mid-May, when neither crowd topped 42,000 and one (39,788) didn’t even register as a sellout.

But that was a Monday-Wednesday series before school let out for the summer. This was a weekend in the heart of vacation time, one week before the Fourth of July.

“If I lived in L.A., I would want to come down to San Diego too,” Padres reliever Jason Adam said.

Added Musgrove: “It’s just how it is, man. They’re so close. They got a lot of Dodger fans down here in San Diego already, and I know they’re always looking to fill out our stadium. I think partially because the atmosphere is awesome. It’s a great ballpark, good food, a fun place to watch a game, but also it’s close enough to (L.A.) to try to trump the Padre fans and fill it out with their fans.”

Then there’s the economics of it all.

Padres season-ticket prices have been on the rise for five straight years, with a weighted average increase of 7% more than doubling the average increase for 2025 (3%). That trend began with 20% average weighted increase in 2022 after going five straight years without an increase.

Beyond ballpark ticket prices, the average price for a tank of gas in San Diego today is $5.52, according to the Auto Club, up nearly $1 from a year ago ($4.64). Inflation over the last 12 months (4.2%) saw its largest increase since April 2023 and San Diego is among the most expensive places to live in the country.

In short, tickets cost more than they used to, it’s more expensive to get around, your dollar doesn’t go quite as far and a Dodgers game is a chance to recoup some of your investment in a season-ticket package.

Single-game tickets available for Sunday’s game, for example, started at $87, compared with $25 for the next series here against the Diamondbacks.

The prices on secondary markets can soar two to three times that.

“I buy season tickets every year here, too, for my family, so it’s super expensive,” Musgrove said. “You got a chance to make some money back, makes sense to me, I guess. We would hope that they would hang on to them and want to come enjoy (this) series from their seats … but it is what it is.”

And it’s been a lot of Dodgers fans this weekend at Petco Park.

It’s difficult to know how close Musgrove’s gauge — 90% Dodgers fans on Saturday — was, especially with the Padres providing little to cheer for in Saturday’s 15-3 laugher, but nobody would suggest it was even close to 50-50.

“Maybe (they sold their tickets) so they can buy another jersey,” Adam said. “Honestly, we play the game the same whether home, road, whoever is in the stands. We love when our fans show up and they do every night to cheer us on.”

Former Dodgers ace Walker Buehler had become accustomed to seeing Dodgers fans take over places like Petco Park, Angel Stadium and Chase Field in Phoenix over the years, but even he noted the drastic difference in the composition of the crowd on Friday and Saturday compared with even just the May series here.

“I think here and Anaheim; Arizona always big,” Buehler said of Dodgers fans in visiting parks, “but this weekend was freaking crazy.”

It won’t be that way should the two teams meet in October, as the Padres have taken to limiting postseason ticket purchasers to those in certain ZIP codes to maintain a home-field advantage.

The vibe this weekend, however, remained raucous whether or not you could decipher who was rooting for what (both factions appeared to boo upstart Dodgers lightning rod Dalton Rushing following communication issues with Shohei Ohtani earlier in the week).

“It’s just loud,” Padres center fielder Jackson Merrill said. “It’s good baseball. It’s loud. That’s all I get from it.”

Added Musgrove: “I mean, the atmosphere is the same still. I don’t think there’s a lot of players that really feel the boos or hear the cheers. It’s more just noise, you know. So, whether it’s our fans or their fans, if it’s noisy, it’s all the same.”