Joe Musgrove’s status hands Padres an Opening Day headache they did not need

The Padres can call Joe Musgrove’s latest delay a “pause,” and from their perspective that is probably the right way to frame it. He is working back from Tommy John surgery, the team doesn’t view this as a major long-term setback, and nobody in San Diego should want the club forcing him into the Opening Day picture if he’s not ready. That all makes sense. The problem is that even a reasonable, cautious decision can still create a very real headache, and that is exactly what this has become for the Padres.

At this point, Musgrove is expected to open the season on the 15-day injured list after dealing with elbow tightness and failing to recover as hoped from his March 4 exhibition outing. As Jeff Sanders of the San Diego Union-Tribune noted, the Padres always expected there to be some unevenness in Musgrove’s return. 

Padres face early rotation stress with Joe Musgrove sidelined

Craig Stammen more or less acknowledged that too much time has now passed for Musgrove to be built up into a starter who could reasonably be expected to throw five innings and around ninety pitches by Opening Day. In other words, this is not some shocking collapse of a plan. It is a consequence the Padres knew was on the table all along.

San Diego didn’t need one of its most important rotation arms becoming unavailable this close to the start of the season, especially not when the group already carried so little margin for error. A healthy Musgrove was never just another name penciled into the rotation. He was one of the few stabilizers in a staff that already needed a lot of things to break correctly. Even if his absence only lasts a short while, it immediately shifts the conversation from the Padres having some interesting options to the Padres needing those options to hold up right away.

Michael King and Nick Pivetta already figured to carry plenty of weight, and Randy Vásquez was already in line for meaningful innings. Without Musgrove in the early-season mix, the Padres are pushed further into the portion of the depth chart where every candidate comes with a question attached. Walker Buehler is interesting, but not without risk. Germán Márquez has upside, but also uncertainty. JP Sears, Marco Gonzales, and Triston McKenzie all come with varying levels of intrigue, but “intrigue” is a word teams love in camp far more than they do once the games start counting.

The frustrating part for Padres fans is that none of this feels dramatic enough to justify panic, but it is still significant enough to matter. If this were clearly a long-term disaster, the reaction would be simple. Instead, this lands in that middle ground where the cautious choice is still the smart one, yet the team is left absorbing the short-term cost. Musgrove probably shouldn’t be rushed. The Padres probably are doing the responsible thing. They are also still left opening the year with a rotation puzzle they would have much preferred to avoid.