SAN DIEGO \u2014 Three hours before Nick Pivetta battled himself in his worst performance with the San Diego Padres, Joe Musgrove stood at his locker on Opening Day, discussing both the reality and the uncertainty of his situation.<\/p>\n
Musgrove, a pillar of the Padres\u2019 clubhouse and starting rotation, underwent Tommy John surgery almost 18 months ago. He was about to play catch for the first time in more than two weeks, having been temporarily shut down after a setback in his recovery<\/a>. Team officials hope Musgrove can return to the majors in May, although there is no concrete timetable.<\/p>\n \u201cThe idea of getting through the whole season with how I was feeling wasn\u2019t very realistic to me,\u201d Musgrove said. \u201cI didn\u2019t want to \u2026 make my return with this feeling in the back of my mind that at any moment the arm can give out on me again and \u2014 not \u2018give out\u2019 in that super-negative way. It\u2019s just aches and things that I\u2019ve been dealing with from the surgery (and) trying to figure out how to manage them and how to work around them.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not overly concerned with this. They\u2019re not overly concerned. This is kind of just the rest that I needed to get ready for the season.\u201d<\/p>\n So, Thursday afternoon at Petco Park, the Padres began their season without Musgrove in an 8-2 loss to the Detroit Tigers. It was a day ripe for overreaction. With opposing ace Tarik Skubal largely cruising, it was also the kind of day that underscored the vulnerability of San Diego\u2019s starting pitching.<\/p>\n Pivetta, who skipped a recent Cactus League outing because of arm fatigue, surrendered four runs before he recorded two outs. He finally escaped the top of the first after three walks and 33 pitches, perhaps only a couple away from being pulled for left-hander Kyle Hart, who had begun warming up in the bullpen.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were trying to cap Nick at maybe 35 pitches in that first inning,\u201d Craig Stammen said after a managerial debut<\/a> he described as \u201chumbling.\u201d \u201cKyle was probably pretty close to (being asked) to stop the bleeding.\u201d<\/p>\n Pivetta steadied himself briefly \u2014 he yielded only a two-out single in the top of the second \u2014 but the early workload led to the right-hander\u2019s exit after a two-run third inning. The Padres, playing in front of the largest Opening Day crowd in Petco Park history, trailed 6-0. Pivetta was done at 69 largely inefficient pitches, a far cry from the starter who received Cy Young Award votes in 2025.<\/p>\n \u201cFirst game back is always a tough one for every pitcher, and when you get tasked pitching Opening Day for the first time, there\u2019s just a lot of emotions that go with it,\u201d Stammen, a former big-league pitcher, said. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t his best day today, but he\u2019ll be good for us the rest of the season.\u201d<\/p>\n Pivetta was less diplomatic with himself.<\/p>\n \u201cOf course, I would love that game back, but that\u2019s not reality,\u201d Pivetta said. \u201cThat\u2019s not how the world works. Just look to capitalize on the next couple days off \u2026 get a good bullpen (session), get back to who I am.\u201d<\/p>\n Even with the health concerns that arose in spring training, even if he will be challenged to replicate a career-best year, Pivetta remains the surest thing in a rotation rife with question marks. Michael King went from starring in 2024 to being waylaid by injuries in 2025. The Padres are encouraged by Randy V\u00e1squez\u2019s development, but on most contending teams, he would not be a mid-rotation starter, at least not yet. Walker Buehler and Germ\u00e1n M\u00e1rquez are veterans diminished by elbow injuries, hoping to revive their careers in pitcher-friendly San Diego.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Musgrove, Matt Waldron and Griffin Canning remain postponed as they rehab from various surgeries. And though the Padres have demonstrated interest, it remains to be seen if they will make a serious run at Lucas Giolito, the top starter lingering in free agency. Most people around the team believe president of baseball operations A.J. Preller preemptively spent at least some of the money saved by veteran starter Yu Darvish\u2019s placement on the restricted list<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cAgain, this is something that we\u2019ve been planning for and working towards throughout the whole offseason,\u201d Preller said before Thursday\u2019s game. \u201cFiguring out exactly what (Darvish) wanted to do, what list was the right list to put him on \u2026 that was really what the last six to eight weeks was about. But in terms of the planning part of it, it doesn\u2019t really change anything on our end.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, few teams appear to need Giolito as much as San Diego does. And Preller is not one to broadcast whatever he is attempting to do; what surfaces tends to surprise. Over the offseason, The Athletic reported, he pursued<\/a> veteran starter Merrill Kelly and explored the market<\/a> for top left-hander Framber Valdez.<\/p>\n Had Kelly accepted a three-year offer worth more than $50 million, Preller still might have tried to re-sign King. (He also might have then looked to trade Pivetta and his $19 million salary.) The Padres discussed concepts involving a longer deal with Valdez, though those talks never became particularly advanced.<\/p>\n The biggest obstacle: Under previous ownership, the Padres had already lavished nine-figure contracts on Musgrove, Darvish and several other players, limiting the club\u2019s flexibility. Now, with a franchise sale looming, Preller might have to continue waiting for additional funds that may or may not come.<\/p>\n \u200b\u200bThursday, amid a lopsided contest, the Padres still showed why the general manager would like to continue investing. A vaunted bullpen mostly stopped the bleeding. A lineup with plenty of capable hitters constructed quality at-bats and supplied an unearned run against Skubal, arguably the sport\u2019s best pitcher.<\/p>\n And San Diego still employs one of the game\u2019s most respected instructors. During pregame introductions, newcomer Miguel Andujar expressed his surprise when the crowd roared for Ruben Niebla, the associate manager and pitching coach.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m like, \u2018Yeah, the pitching here since I\u2019ve been here has been pretty good,’\u201d said shortstop Xander Bogaerts, who went 2-for-4 with an RBI double in his fourth Opening Day with the Padres. \u201cObviously, credit to the pitching coaches and to the pitchers that we have. I feel like, in the end, they will do their thing.<\/p>\n \u201cHaving Buehler, M\u00e1rquez \u2014 they\u2019re battling, and they\u2019re going to give you all that they have. They obviously have a lot of success in the past. Hopefully, that can transition over with us. Knowing Ruben and the pitching staff, all the pitching guys that we have, the coaches, they do a good job ever since I\u2019ve been here. I don\u2019t know how it was before, but that\u2019s pretty good.\u201d<\/p>\n If Niebla and his assistants help the Padres to a third consecutive postseason, it might be their most impressive work yet. Thursday was only one day, but the concerns about the Padres\u2019 rotation will not lift anytime soon. Friday, King will duel Valdez, the Tigers\u2019 new $115 million pitcher.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN DIEGO \u2014 Three hours before Nick Pivetta battled himself in his worst performance with the San Diego…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":645890,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2407],"tags":[5,4,43,137,18,4339,4338],"class_list":{"0":"post-645889","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego-padres","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-padres","11":"tag-san-diego","12":"tag-san-diego-padres","13":"tag-sandiego","14":"tag-sandiegopadres"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116299382341336777","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645889","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=645889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645889\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/645890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=645889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=645889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=645889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}