PEORIA, Ariz. \u2014 Jason Adam will be ready for opening day.<\/p>\n
According to Jason Adam.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn my mind, where I\u2019m starting,\u201d Adam said Tuesday, \u201cI\u2019m ready opening day.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also acknowledged he is not in charge. And no one else in the organization is willing to put a timeline on Adam\u2019s readiness for the start of 2026 after a ruptured quad tendon ended his 2025 season a month early.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to take his progression the way the trainers prescribed it, the way the physical therapists have prescribed it,\u201d manager Craig Stammen said. \u201cHe has been throwing off the mound. We\u2019ll see how that continues to progress. We\u2019ll see how it continues to progress with him running and being active on his feet. \u2026 We\u2019re not putting a timeline on when he\u2019ll be ready. Every player wants to beat the timeline. That\u2019s the competitive nature that they have inside them, and he\u2019s no different. So he\u2019s been working his tail off to beat that timeline.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll see where he ends up at the end of camp. We\u2019re going to decide what\u2019s best for him. And hopefully we\u2019re on the same page together. We may have a different opinion at times, but we\u2019ve got the best interest in him, not only for this season but for the rest of his career.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fact is, Adam being on the roster for the March 26 opener would put him in the middle of the recovery time of six to nine\u00a0 months projected at the time of his injury.\u00a0And what seemingly lends more legitimacy to the idea he will be ready than can typically be ascribed to an athlete\u2019s optimism about injuries is that he does appear to be on a good track.<\/p>\n
Adam has been throwing off a mound since early December and, with Padres pitchers and catchers set for their first official workout of spring on Wednesday morning, is now throwing full-go bullpen sessions.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe next hurdle we\u2019ll have to get running and (fielding practice) stuff,\u201d he said. \u201cBut as far as throwing bullpens, it all feels pretty normal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Adam, who spent much of spring in 2025 tinkering with his delivery, actually said this on Tuesday: \u201cI feel better pitching at this point than I did at this point last year. \u2026 I felt all out of sorts last year. This year, it\u2019s simple. We\u2019re just trying to pitch, and I feel a lot cleaner. And hopefully that\u2019ll translate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Adam was an All-Star for the first time in 2025 and at the time of his injury ranked 10th among MLB\u2019s qualifying relievers in ERA (1.93), was tied for sixth in appearances (65) and was second in holds (29).<\/p>\n
Considering his importance to a bullpen that is almost inarguably the strength of the team and with the reality Robert Suarez departed in free agency, Adam being full-go for a full season is potentially monumental.<\/p>\n
His being healthy and pitching well for as much of the season as possible is also a reason the Padres are taking a wait-and-see approach to the final stages of his rehabilitation.<\/p>\n
The Padres\u2019 prospects for last October changed drastically on two days in September.<\/p>\n
One was Sept. 24 when left fielder Ram\u00f3n Laureano\u2019s season ended when he suffered a fractured right index finger swinging at a pitch. The other was the first day of that month when Adam delivered a pitch and almost immediately toppled to the dirt.<\/p>\n
Adam told Padres president of baseball operations A.J. Preller in the clubhouse that night, \u201cI\u2019m really glad you went out and got Mason (Miller).\u201d<\/p>\n
And that was certainly fortunate. A bullpen that finished the season with MLB\u2019s best ERA still had Suarez, Miller, Adrian Morej\u00f3n and Jeremiah Estrada to cover high-leverage situations.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s hard, because you always want to see, like, what could and should have been,\u201d Adam said. \u201cBut man, those guys held it down. Like I\u2019ve said, I could not have picked a better bullpen to get hurt in, because they were nails from start to finish. Yeah. So proud of those guys, love watching them do their work. Obviously, I would have loved to play, but they did just fine without me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Indeed, the Padres bullpen\u2019s 2.81 ERA over the 24 games at the end without Adam was .30 better than the season\u2019s first 138 games. Same with its batting average allowed (.176 versus .211).<\/p>\n
But the effective flow of the group was interrupted when Adam went down, and great became good.<\/p>\n
The Padres went from having four relievers to cover three or four innings to having three, giving manager Mike Shildt fewer options to deploy each game and over a series of games. That cost other relievers rest and almost certainly cost the Padres some wins, as they had to rely more on a tiring Estrada and rookie David Morgan.<\/p>\n
If Adam had been available, giving Shildt another top arm with which to cover the requisite innings, there is a good chance Yu Darvish would not been left in long enough to allow a pair of second-inning runs in what ended up a 3-1 season-ending loss in Game 3 of the National League wild-card series.<\/p>\n
Much as will almost certainly be the case with starting pitcher Joe Musgrove, who is coming back from Tommy John surgery, Adam can be considered full-go and still not be allowed to fully go in spring training.<\/p>\n
One concession to his comeback is that Adam will likely make a number of appearances in a controlled environment on back fields before appearing in a Cactus League game<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he\u2019s exceeding our expectations at the moment,\u201d Stammen said. \u201c\u2026 As a coaching staff and as a team, we\u2019ve got to be smart enough to work with the player and keep him in a progression that we think is safe and that will allow him to have the most success for the rest of his career \u2014 not just this season but also, you know, set him up for success when we\u2019re really going to need him, and that\u2019s hopefully when we\u2019re fighting for the division and making a playoff run.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PEORIA, Ariz. \u2014 Jason Adam will be ready for opening day. According to Jason Adam. \u201cIn my mind,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":173317,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[181,1334,74,76,75,2611,127],"class_list":{"0":"post-173316","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-latest-headlines","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-san-diego","11":"tag-san-diego-headlines","12":"tag-san-diego-news","13":"tag-san-diego-padres","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173316\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}