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Jacob deGrom always made for one hell of a story. He was the ninth-round draft pick out of Stetson, a college shortstop who became an accidental pitcher, and then a franchise player with a mind-bending combination of precision and heat.

The Mets were supposed to belong to Matt Harvey and Noah Syndergaard, first-round picks in the same 2010 draft in which deGrom was taken 272nd overall. They were supposed to belong to Zack Wheeler, another first-rounder from the year before, who joined the Mets by way of the Carlos Beltran trade in 2011. They were supposed to belong to the local boy, Steven Matz, another high pick from 2009.

DeGrom outlasted them all. He became the Mets, and the Mets became him. It is quite possible that at his peak, deGrom pitched at a higher level than any big leaguer ever has.

He grew into the Tom Brady of his sport, one drafted 272nd, the other drafted 199th. And now the Mets will lean on his golden right arm the way the Patriots and the Buccaneers have leaned on Brady’s.

Jacob deGrom has to save the season Saturday night, in Game 2 against San Diego. The Padres, on Friday night, destroyed what was left of Max Scherzer’s aura of invincibility after his start in Atlanta last week, blasting him for four homers and seven runs in 4 ²/₃ innings in a 7-1 rout. In the process, San Diego made a mockery of the notion that the Mets could keep deGrom out of this wild-card series to rest him up for the Dodgers in the NLDS.

Manager Buck Showalter planned on pitching Chris Bassitt on Saturday night if his team won the opener, and on pitching deGrom if his team lost the opener. Showalter wouldn’t make the announcement of his Game 2 starter, so the Padres made it for him.

And now it’s all on the 6-foot-4, 180-pound flamethrower, a lean, mean machine who will be firing fastballs north of 100 miles per hour. The whole 101-win season is on him. The whole Showalter program. The whole Steve Cohen program.

All of it is sitting like a 500-pound boulder on Jake’s tender right shoulder.

“That’s what we love doing, competing, and going out there in big situations,” deGrom said. “You’re going out there and you’re trying to leave it all out on the field. You look yourself in the mirror at the end of the day and know that you gave 100 percent. That’s all you can do.”

DeGrom hasn’t pitched in a postseason game in seven years, and he has never pitched in one at Citi Field. But he does have positive elimination-game muscle memory to lean on — he beat the Dodgers in Game 5 of the 2015 NLDS, and he beat them without his best stuff.

He said that the blood blister on his finger is all healed up, and that his Game 2 goal is to eliminate mistakes in big situations — exactly what Scherzer failed to do. As if this drama needed another hook, this could be deGrom’s last career start for the Mets. He has repeatedly made it clear he will opt out of his contract and into free agency, no doubt to pursue a deal that pays him more than Scherzer’s $43.3 million annual wage.

Before the game Friday, one member of the Mets family asked me if I would give deGrom $50 million a year for three years. I shook my head east to west. “Forty million for three years?” the person followed up. I shook my head up and down.

If deGrom can get the Mets out of this mess and launch their drive to their first World Series title since 1986, hey, I might go for sixty mil a pop. But first things first: deGrom has to beat the same Padres team that just took a jackhammer to Scherzer, and got him soundly booed off the mound.

Of course, deGrom is good enough to pull it off and advance his team to Game 3, despite the way he looked in Atlanta and in Oakland in his last two regular-season starts. DeGrom is a magical talent with a magical origin story. Back in 2010, Mets general manager Omar Minaya was too focused on North Carolina’s Harvey — a power pitcher who reminded him of Roger Clemens — to know much of anything about a skinny converted shortstop from Stetson.

“We couldn’t visualize what he is today,” Minaya said of deGrom.

Today, deGrom is a two-time Cy Young Award winner and one-time World Series participant. He is 34 years old now, and running low on time to win a championship. Between that 2015 World Series loss to Kansas City and Friday night, the Mets had appeared in a grand total of one postseason game.

They can’t afford to go two-and-done in this wild-card round, not after controlling the National League East for nearly the entire season. They blew a first-round bye in Atlanta, and this was supposed to be their chance to make up for it. Beat San Diego in two. Upset the Dodgers in five. Pay back the Braves in seven. That was their formula for redemption.

It could all go up in smoke Saturday night. As it turns out, all that stands between the Mets and an unmitigated disaster is Jacob deGrom. The franchise player has no choice but to deliver for the franchise.