Brutal Nick Pivetta injury just opened door for an ideal replacement (with similar contract)

Nick Pivetta getting pulled with right elbow stiffness is the kind of update that instantly shifts the Padres conversation from maybe needing more pitching depth to looking like they need to act now. Pivetta left Sunday’s start against the Rockies in the fourth inning, and the early reporting made it clear this was not just a routine in-game precaution. His velocity was down on his final pitch, Craig Stammen acknowledged imaging could be on the table depending on how Pivetta feels, and this all comes after Pivetta already missed a spring start because of arm fatigue. That doesn’t mean disaster is guaranteed, but it absolutely means San Diego just had a door crack open again. 

And once that door opens, it is pretty hard not to look straight at Lucas Giolito. He’s still unsigned, and it was reported that he is throwing roughly 75 pitches in side sessions. So he’s not sitting on a couch somewhere totally detached from baseball shape. He’s stretched out enough to be relevant and established enough to feel like more than some random depth fling. 

Padres may have just stumbled into a painfully obvious Lucas Giolito opportunity

In The Baseball Insiders podcast, Robert Murray brought the Lucas Giolito-to-San Diego idea back into focus, and it’s getting harder to ignore now. He had already mentioned that the Padres continued to make sense as a landing spot because of their need for pitching depth, and after the Nick Pivetta scare, that read feels even sharper. What looked like a reasonable fit a couple weeks ago now feels a whole lot closer to the obvious move.

The part that makes this especially interesting is the contract angle. Pivetta signed with San Diego on a four-year, $55 million deal that was built in a pretty creative way, with a $3 million signing bonus, just $1 million in 2025 salary, and opt-outs after 2026 and 2027. In other words, the Padres already showed they are willing to get weird with structure if it helps them land a pitcher they like. 

So when people start talking about a “Pivetta-style” deal for Giolito, it doesn’t sound far-fetched at all. It actually sounds like exactly the kind of thing A.J. Preller would be drawn to. A lower base, incentives, opt-outs, maybe some roster-bonus creativity, maybe something that lets Giolito bet on himself while giving San Diego protection. 

And honestly, the Padres have reached the point where they should be thinking that way. Because this isn’t just about Pivetta being hurt. It’s about how fast the Padres’ rotation can go from manageable to uncomfortable once you start pulling legitimate innings out of a group that was not exactly overflowing with certainty. Even if Stammen’s early tone was relatively optimistic, elbow stiffness is still elbow stiffness. This isn’t the kind of update a contender should wave off and pretend is no big deal, especially when the fallback plan on the market is a veteran who is already built up and still waiting for the phone to ring. 

The Giolito idea feels like the ideal replacement target. Not perfect. But ideal in the very Padres sense of the word. Available now. Experienced. Motivated. Probably open to a creative structure. And most importantly, he solves the exact type of problem San Diego might suddenly have again.

Could the Padres strike twice with another contract in the same spirit as the Pivetta deal? Yeah, they really might have to. And if Preller was already tempted by Giolito before Sunday, it is hard to imagine this latest development made that temptation any weaker.