Padres dealt troubling bullpen blow after velocity dip raises red flags

When the Padres placed Jeremiah Estrada on the 15-day injured list with right elbow tendinitis, retroactive to April 9, it landed like something everyone had been bracing for once the velocity drop showed up. AJ Cassavell reported the move Friday, and Estrada’s official transaction page reflects the same date and injury designation. 

This update feels more troubling than a normal early-season bullpen shuffle. We were watching a pitcher whose fastball had suddenly lost life, whose results were backing up, and wasn’t looking quite like that player who had a breakout run last year. By the time the elbow news arrived, the red flags were already sitting out in plain view. 

Jeremiah Estrada lands on injured list as Padres’ early bullpen fear gets worse

Estrada was one of the nastiest relievers on this staff in 2025. He posted a 3.45 ERA, struck out 108 hitters in 73 innings, and looked like a bullpen weapon who could shorten games in a hurry. When a guy with that profile suddenly opens 2026 with a 5.14 ERA over 7 innings, 8 strikeouts, 5 walks, and a noticeable dip in fastball velocity, nobody is going to shrug that off. 

Estrada averaged 97.9 mph on his fastball in 2025, but early this season that number had fallen to 95.0. Some have pointed to changes in his arm angle and extension, noting that he looked like a different pitcher than the version the Padres rode so heavily last year. That doesn’t automatically mean injury every time, but when a power reliever starts losing that much zip and then lands on the IL, it gets hard to pretend that the changes are unrelated. 

This bullpen has enough moving parts that one bad outing does not break everything, but Estrada wasn’t considered a low-leverage extra arm who could disappear without consequence. His swing-and-miss stuff changes the shape of the middle and late innings when he is right. Losing that version of him hurts.

It also matters because this did not come out of nowhere after one catastrophic appearance. Estrada himself acknowledged concern about the velocity dip before the IL move. That alone made it hard to write off as small-sample weirdness. Once the pitcher notices it, the tone changes.

Now the Padres are left hoping this is exactly what the team called it: tendinitis, an early-season interruption, and not the start of something bigger. That hope is reasonable. Teams put pitchers on the shelf all the time in April to get ahead of a problem before it gets uglier. But let’s not do the thing where we act like this is no big deal just because the calendar still says April. We’ve seen issues like this linger over an entire season.

This is an unfortunate reminder of how quickly bullpen certainty can evaporate. One week you think you have a power arm ready to build on a breakout season. The next week you are staring at an elbow-related IL move.