Triston McKenzie, Matt Waldron, Germ\u00e1n M\u00e1rquez, JP Sears and Marco Gonzales are all competing with Buehler for likely just one rotation spot with the Padres, according to the Union-Tribune.<\/p>\n
![\"Walker](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/cleveland-guardians-walker-buehler-throws-106006724.jpg\")
Walker Buehler throws a pitch during a June 2025 game for the Red Sox. Robert Sabo for the NY Post<\/p>\n
The deal marked a return to the NL West division where Buehler starred for the first seven seasons \u2014 not counting 2023, when he missed the entire campaign due to a second Tommy John surgery \u2014 with the Dodgers and won a pair of rings with them in 2020 and 2024.<\/p>\n
Buehler, though, has mostly struggled since returning from the procedure, and in 2025, he didn\u2019t even last the entire season with the Red Sox before getting demoted to their bullpen<\/a> and then ultimately released<\/a> \u2014 landing a minor-league deal with the Phillies<\/a> ahead of the postseason.<\/p>\n He started just one game for Triple-A Lehigh Valley and appeared in three \u2014 while starting two \u2014 for the Phillies the rest of the season. Buehler finished with a 4.94 ERA across his stints with both teams in 2025.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s obviously disappointing,\u201d Buehler said after being demoted to the Red Sox\u2019s bullpen. \u201cIt\u2019s the first time in my career that I\u2019ve been in a situation like that, but at the end of the day the organization and to a lesser extent myself, kind of think it\u2019s probably the right thing for our group and it gives me an opportunity to kind of reset in some ways.\u201d<\/p>\n But at the peak of his career, Buehler was an ace for the Dodgers who topped 23 starts in a season three times and finished inside the top-10 for Cy Young voting twice.<\/p>\n During the Dodgers\u2019 World Series run in 2024, Buehler threw five shutout innings against the Yankees in Game 3 before recording the final three outs in Game 5 to secure Los Angeles\u2019 championship.<\/p>\n He also delivered a strong start for the Dodgers during Game 3 of the NLCS against the Mets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former World Series hero Walker Buehler is getting another chance to revive his MLB career \u2014 and this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":576968,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2375],"tags":[5,141,48,2542,4,89,2543,18,185,115],"class_list":{"0":"post-576967","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boston-red-sox","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-boston","10":"tag-boston-red-sox","11":"tag-bostonredsox","12":"tag-mlb","13":"tag-red-sox","14":"tag-redsox","15":"tag-san-diego-padres","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-walker-buehler"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116084497261870512","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=576967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576967\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/576968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=576967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=576967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=576967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Cleveland](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/cleveland-guardians-walker-buehler-reacts-106006775.jpg\")
Walker Buehler reacts during a June 2025 start for the Red Sox. Robert Sabo for the NY Post<\/p>\n