Joe Musgrove hasn’t started a game for the San Diego Padres since the 2024 playoffs. He missed the 2025 season recovering from elbow reconstruction surgery and had hoped to make his long-awaited return to the mound at Petco Park during the opening series of the 2026 season.
On Monday, Padres manager Craig Stammen said that’s probably not going to happen.
“He’s most likely going to start on the [injured list] this year,” Stammen said.
Musgrove made one start during Spring Training, an exhibition against Great Britain’s World Baseball Classic team on March 4. He hasn’t faced another team since, and the runway for him to build up to the point he’s ready to start a regular-season game has run out.
“We’re getting to the point where he’s taken enough time off that it would be hard to ramp him up to get him to be a viable starter that can throw five innings, 90 pitches,” Stammen said.
Stammen reiterated the delay in Musgrove’s preparation is not something the club is worried about. They still believe he’s trending in the right direction and are choosing to play the long game, ensuring one of their most important arms is pitching meaningful innings in September and October.
“Like I said, this was part of the plan,” Stammen said. “We knew he was going to have to take some time off. We knew we were going to have to, you know, get him ready for the entire season and not just Opening Day. We’ll miss Joe at the beginning, but we’re going to have Joe at some point in the season.”
With Musgrove out of the mix for at least the first trip through the rotation, the Padres now have a couple of starting spots open. It’s looking more and more likely that Walker Buehler will occupy one of them. The former Dodgers star is looking to overcome injuries of his own and took a big step forward on Monday.
Buehler looked great in his third Cactus League start against the Giants, tossing 5.0 shutout innings with seven strikeouts. He doesn’t throw in the upper-90s anymore but with help from Padres pitching coach Ruben Niebla is learning to employ a more diverse arsenal. Buehler threw seven different pitches against San Francisco, getting a strikeout with five of them.