The San Diego Padres found out on Friday that starting pitcher Joe Musgrove will not be available in their NLDS series against the Los Angeles Dodgers.
But the situation is actually significantly worse than that.
Padres manager A.J. Preller later announced that Musgrove has a torn UCL and will undergo Tommy John surgery, per FOX Sports, sidelining him for the remainder of the postseason and almost certainly far into the 2025 season.
In the short term, this is a crushing injury for the Padres. Musgrove has been one of the best pitchers in the National League since arriving in San Diego prior to the 2021 season — at least when healthy. That has been the struggle for Musgrove the past two years as he has been limited to just 36 starts between the 2023 and 2024 seasons.
He pitched 3.2 innings in the Padres’ Game 2 series-clinching win against the Atlanta Braves earlier this week, leaving after just 44 pitches.
He struck out four and allowed just one earned run before exiting the game.
The Padres still have strong starting options in the postseason with Dylan Cease, Michael King and Yu Darvish leading the rotation, as well as a bullpen that they strengthened at the trade deadline. But losing a top-of-the-rotation starter is never an easy thing to overcome, but it’s especially tough with a best-of-five series against the Los Angeles Dodgers and their powerful lineup looming.
