Padres’ bullpen absorbs a brutal WBC setback with Opening Day looming

This wasn’t supposed to be the part of spring where the Padres start doing bullpen math with a pit in their stomach. When Yuki Matsui first felt the left groin tightness, it was easy to file it under February weirdness — a skipped day here, a cautious ramp-up there, and the usual “we’ll see how he feels tomorrow” language that lives in every camp.

Now it has teeth.

The news that Matsui will miss the World Baseball Classic for Japan turns this from “minor inconvenience” into an actual roster-level problem — because it drags the bigger question right into the light: is he going to be ready for Opening Day on March 26? That answer is still unclear, with the ramp-up continuing but no firm timeline for getting back on a mound yet. 

Padres’ bullpen suddenly feels fragile after Yuki Matsui’s WBC withdrawal

The frustrating part is this isn’t really about the WBC. The WBC news just confirms how serious the timing is. If he isn’t healthy enough to pitch for Japan, the Padres can’t keep treating it like a hiccup they’ll laugh off by mid-March.

This is a bullpen that’s built on structure. The Padres need their lefty to be available. To take real innings and neutralize real pockets of left-handed threats. That’s the chain reaction nobody wants to talk about in February, because it’s the kind that shows up in April as “why does this bullpen feel like it’s always one pitch away from chaos?”

The optimistic read is simple: groins are tricky, but they’re not elbows, and the Padres are doing the boring smart thing — shut it down, let it calm, rebuild properly. The pessimistic read is also simple: the calendar doesn’t care. Opening Day is coming fast, and relief pitchers don’t get to fake their way into readiness. If the mound work gets delayed, the regular season doesn’t politely wait for your buildup.

So yes, it’s a “WBC setback.” But for the Padres, it’s really a reminder that the bullpen plan looks great on paper… right up until one injury turns it into an emergency rotation of matchups and crossed fingers.