Musgrove's return to the mound 'another step' toward regaining old form

PEORIA, Ariz. -- Joe Musgrove returned to the mound for the Padres’ exhibition against Team Great Britain on Wednesday -- the first time he’d pitched in a game setting since his October 2024 Tommy John surgery.

He’s quick to point out that this is not the target.

Musgrove has much bigger goals in mind, and, as such, he wasn’t going to make all that much out of an early March outing at the Peoria Sports Complex.

“To me, this is another step,” Musgrove said. “I think getting in a big league game, facing big league hitters in the big stadium, night game, things like that will be another adjustment. For me, this was just: I’m still checking boxes and building up.”

All of that may be true. This was still a massive day for the San Diego Padres.

Musgrove is one of the team’s unquestioned leaders and one of its most important players. And with the 2026 season approaching -- and question marks elsewhere in the starting rotation -- here was Joe Musgrove on the mound looking like, well, Joe Musgrove.

Which isn’t to say he was instantly back to his dominant form. But there were flashes of it. The 95-mph fastball he blew past Jazz Chisholm Jr. The cutter he used to freeze Will Cresswell. The nasty curveball to punch out Matt Koperniak.

In the end, Musgrove pitched two-plus innings, punching out those three, while allowing a run on five hits, all of them singles. His pitch count was being monitored fairly strictly, and he didn’t complete the first inning, let down a couple times by his defense. (There weren’t any errors, but with Xander Bogaerts at short and Fernando Tatis Jr. in right field, Musgrove probably escapes that same inning unscathed.)

More importantly, Musgrove said he felt healthy, and he showcased some of the same stuff that made him one of the best pitchers in the National League across his first four seasons with the Padres. His fastball sat at its usual 93-94 mph range, and his breaking stuff induced swings and misses. Still, there was always going to be a reacclimation period.

“I liked the shapes of my stuff,” Musgrove said. “Just command-wise, a little bit off from where I need to be.”

Fair enough. It’s been 17 months since Musgrove tore the UCL in his right elbow during the 2024 National League Wild Card Series against Atlanta. If his command is a bit rusty, that’s excusable. Musgrove also mentioned how fast it felt the game was moving on him. And, hey, that’s what these exhibition starts are for.

“I’ve been working at a very casual pace for the last couple months,” Musgrove said. “Overall, I felt pretty good though. My stuff felt good.”

It’d be hard to overstate just how badly the Padres need Musgrove. There are already major questions about who fills out the back end of their starting rotation. Alongside Nick Pivetta and Michael King at the top, the Padres need Musgrove. And not merely as he pertains to the rotation.

“It’s more what he means to the entire team, just who he is as a person, how he represents the city of San Diego, how he represents the Padres,” manager Craig Stammen said. “He is who we want to be like, who we want to be about.”

It probably wouldn’t be fair to expect Musgrove to instantly revert to his All-Star form. Across those four seasons in San Diego, he’s posted a 3.20 ERA in 98 appearances. He’s delivered on some of the biggest stages.

The Padres will almost certainly slow-play Musgrove. They might skip a start here and there. They might bump him back or use a six-man rotation at times. But the goal, Musgrove has said, is to be regaining his old dominance as the calendar ticks toward September and October.

“I don’t expect to make 180-200 innings,” Musgrove said. “But I expect to be able to take the ball throughout the year and be productive.”

And Wednesday’s outing marked another very positive step toward that goal.