Joe Musgrove has not pitched in a major league game since October 2, 2024. On Tuesday the Padres put him on their 26-man roster for the National League Wild Card Series against the Cubs. That is a 727-day gap between appearances, and San Diego is choosing to close it in a win-or-go-home round.
The last time anyone saw Musgrove on a big league mound was Game 2 of the 2024 Wild Card Series against Atlanta, the game in which his elbow gave out. Tommy John surgery followed that October. He missed all of 2025, then hit setbacks that wiped out effectively all of 2026, including a back problem that pushed the timeline back again.
The Velocity Says Go
Here is why this is not a sentimental gesture for a hometown kid from El Cajon. Across three Triple-A rehab starts in August, Musgrove averaged 94.4 mph on his fastball. His 2024 average was 92.9. The repaired elbow is throwing harder than the one that produced a 123 ERA+ over 97 starts in a Padres uniform.
His most recent rehab outing went five innings with one earned run and three strikeouts. That is not a dominant line, but it is a healthy one, and it arrived after a rehab process that kept stalling. Musgrove has said he is the most optimistic he has felt at any point in the last two years.
A Bullpen Spot San Diego Can Afford
The Padres plan to use him in relief, which is the sane way to deploy a career starter who has thrown a handful of competitive innings in two years. He has 26 career relief appearances and four postseason relief outings, so the role is not foreign to him. In a three-game series, somebody has to eat innings if a starter gets knocked around early.
San Diego can afford the experiment because its bullpen is among the best in baseball. Musgrove is not taking a spot from a high-leverage arm the team desperately needs. Wandy Peralta and Randy Vasquez were left off, as was swingman Griffin Canning, and none of those omissions will decide this series.
The Padres Earned the Right to Gamble
San Diego finished 91-71 and grabbed the fourth seed, but the record undersells how strange the season was. The Padres were 50-53 in late July and looked like obvious deadline sellers. They then won 41 of their final 59 games and played their way into hosting a playoff round.
A team that comes back from the dead like that has already spent the year making bets. Chicago led all of baseball with 805 runs scored and finished fourth in run differential, with Pete Crow-Armstrong a frontrunner for NL MVP. San Diego needs every arm it can point at that lineup.
Game 1 is Tuesday at 7 p.m. at Petco Park, Michael King (12-10, 3.21 ERA) against Matthew Boyd (10-5, 3.91). Musgrove could appear as soon as that night, in front of the same crowd that watched him throw the first no-hitter in franchise history in 2021.
I like the call. The downside is one ugly inning from a reliever who was never going to be trusted in the ninth anyway. The upside is a pitcher with that track record and better stuff than he had before surgery, in a format where one clean outing can flip a series. Take that trade every time.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.