The math no longer works.<\/p>\n
It has become a virtual certainty that Padres starting pitcher Nick Pivetta will not be on the major league roster by Aug. 22, which means his player option for 2027 becomes a team option that almost certainly will not be picked up.<\/p>\n
Pivetta will continue to work to try to return this season, but he does not have time to be ready to pitch in the major leagues 12 days from now.<\/p>\n
A stipulation in Pivetta\u2019s contract signed in February 2025 states that if he spends more than 130 consecutive days on the injured list, his $14 million option for \u201927 becomes a team option. That protection was put in place because Pivetta missed time with the Red Sox in 2024 with a strained elbow flexor tendon. That is the same injury that caused him to leave his fourth start of this season, on April 12.<\/p>\n
The 33-year-old right-hander has been on the injured list since then.<\/p>\n
Pivetta worked his way back to make a rehab start last Tuesday, but he walked off the field after 14 pitches without completing his first inning of work. He subsequently threw between 20 and 30 pitches off a mound that day.<\/p>\n
Pivetta experienced what he described as a \u201csensation\u201d in his elbow while pitching for low-A Lake Elsinore. After several minutes, he felt better and eventually threw 20 or so pitches off a mound in the Storm\u2019s batting cage.<\/p>\n
Pivetta threw in the bullpen at Petco Park on Monday for the second time since then, but neither of those sessions was full-speed and were said to be about \u201ctesting\u201d how hard he could go. No rehab start is scheduled.<\/p>\n
Pivetta has declined to discuss the Aug. 22 deadline or the contract implications. However, people familiar with his thinking say he\u2019s focused on making it back this season.\u00a0Those people also say the communication between Pivetta and the Padres has been excellent and the relationship between the sides is strong.<\/p>\n
Given how he pitched last season, finishing sixth in the National League with a 2.87 ERA, the possibility existed that Pivetta would have ended up opting out of his Padres contract in pursuit of a richer deal had he even come close to duplicating that success this season.<\/p>\n
Pivetta, who will have made $23 million over the first two years of the contract, also had an option on 2028 that will become void, meaning this injury will have potentially cost him at least $32 million.<\/p>\n
It remains possible the Padres and Pivetta could work out a new contract after the season.<\/p>\n
Speaking last week, three days after his truncated rehab outing, Pivetta repeatedly talked about taking his future one day at a time.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just kind of focus on a day-to-day aspect of what my goals are \u2014 to help contribute with my teammates and play a baseball game,\u201d he said. \u201cSo I think anytime I\u2019m able to wake up in the morning, feel good, go out and throw, it\u2019s a good day and just kind of move forward in that general direction.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The math no longer works. It has become a virtual certainty that Padres starting pitcher Nick Pivetta will…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":775500,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2407],"tags":[5,853,4,43,137,18,4339,4338,185,3546],"class_list":["post-775499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego-padres","tag-baseball","tag-latest-headlines","tag-mlb","tag-padres","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-padres","tag-sandiego","tag-sandiegopadres","tag-sports","tag-top-stories-sdut"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/117074492395743477","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775499","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=775499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775499\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/775500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=775499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=775499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=775499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}