PEORIA, Ariz. — The Padres have the first Sunday of the season off and are off again four days later.
In all, they are scheduled to play just 30 games in the season’s first 36 days.
That sort of spacing usually prompts a team to go with five starting pitchers and eight men in the bullpen.
But with two of the team’s top three starters working back from seasons either severely interrupted or entirely wiped out by injury, manager Craig Stammen said Wednesday the Padres could begin 2026 with a six-man rotation.
“Everything is on the table,” Stammen said. “We want to do what’s best for them and what’s best for the team, and how we marry those two things is yet to be determined.”
The Padres could also go with five starting pitchers the first week of the season and call up a pitcher to make a spot start during a run of 10 straight games in early April.
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The pitchers on which the Padres will likely base such a determination are Michael King, who pitched just 73⅓ innings in 15 starts last season due to a nerve impingement near his throwing shoulder and knee inflammation, and Joe Musgrove, who did not pitch in ‘25 after Tommy John surgery.
King and Musgrove are considered full-go, but the Padres have said they plan to be careful with how hard they push both of them at the beginning of the season.
“We’ll see how spring training goes,” Stammen said. “We’ll see how they handle all the live BPs and the simulated games and the backfield games and the actual games in the stadium and then see how they’re recovering. If they can do it every five days or if they need that extra day, we’ll kind of map it out with off days and all that as best we can. … The No. 1 thing is are they capable of being their best when we put them on the mound. Whatever that scenario looks like, that’s what we’re going to do.”
The potential for employing an extra starting pitcher early makes it possible there are two rotation spots available. Five pitchers — Walker Buehler, Marco Gonzales, Germán Márquez, Triston McKenzie and Matt Waldron — are competing for starting jobs this spring.
First up
Logan Gillaspie will start and likely go one inning in Friday’s spring training opener against the Seattle Mariners.
The 25-year-old right-hander has a 5.40 ERA in 12 games in relief for the Padres over the past two seasons. He made 13 starts for Triple-A El Paso in 2025.
“He’s gonna be a jack-of-all-trades,” Stammen said. “He could do anything. We’re gonna stretch him out just to give us some length and give us somebody that we can rely on, that can do a bunch of different things. If we stretch him out and we decide to put him in the bullpen, he could be a bulk reliever. We could put him in the back end of a game. He’s closed out Triple-A games before. He has helped us in the big leagues pitch a lot of innings and save some of our big guys. So just somebody that can kind of do it all.”
Also these guys
Stammen expects many of the Padres regulars to start Friday’s game as well. A part of the reason for that is that three of them — shortstop Xander Bogaerts, third baseman Manny Machado and right fielder Fernando Tatis Jr. — are leaving camp indefinitely on March 1 to participate in the World Baseball Classic.
“They’ve got to get ready for the WBC,” Stammen said. “We don’t want them playing a nine-inning game on March 6 when they haven’t played any games leading up to it. We’ve got to get them ready. They want to play. They want to get the at-bats. So you’ll see quite a few of them early.”
Machado and Tatis are playing for the Dominican Republic and Bogaerts for the Netherlands.
Players who are participating in the WBC will be gone through at least March 12. The finals are March 17, which is nine days before opening day and six days before camp breaks.
The Padres are also losing relievers Alek Jacob and Ron Marinaccio (Italy), Mason Miller (United States), Yuki Matsui (Japan) and Wandy Peralta (Dominican Republic).