Sung Mun Song is already sparking an uneasy Padres health conversation

San Diego Padres fans barely got a chance to talk themselves into the Sung Mun Song signing and we’re already staring at the first buzzkill update.

Per Jeeho Yoo of the Yonhap News Agency, Song is expected to need about four weeks to recover from an oblique injury after tweaking it during a batting practice session. On the surface, that timeline almost plays nice with the start of spring camp. In theory, he could be ready without missing meaningful time.

Sung Mun Song’s Padres debut is starting with a frustrating warning sign

But “in theory” is doing a lot of heavy lifting when the words “oblique” and “hitting” are in the same sentence.

Obliques are the kind of injury that doesn’t just mess with availability — it messes with rhythm. It turns a clean ramp-up into a cautious return. It’s also the injury that loves to feel “fine” right up until the moment a player takes one aggressive swing and suddenly you’re back to square one. So even if four weeks is the best-case scenario, the Padres can’t treat it like a guarantee. Not with a player who needs every bit of spring runway to adjust to MLB pitching and expectations.

It’s not a great look when Song just signed his deal and hasn’t even made his big-league debut, and the Padres are already in monitoring mode.

No one is blaming Song. Freak injuries happen. But from the Padres’ perspective, you don’t sign a player like this to be a long-term concept. You sign him to be an immediate option, and maybe even outperform the “role player” label. The very first box he needed to check was simply: show up healthy, get reps, and get comfortable fast.

Now, instead of a clean introduction, the conversation shifts to whether he’s missing offseason prep time, whether the club has to slow-play his workload, and whether the easiest move is an early injured list stint just to buy him a proper ramp.

And if you’re a Padres fan, that’s where some anxiety will creep in. Because it’s January, spring hasn’t even fully opened its doors, and San Diego already has another health storyline on the board.

The hope is this becomes a footnote by Opening Day. The worry is that it’s the first reminder that “depth” only matters if the bodies are actually available.