The Padres will be without Nick Pivetta for quite some time. Manager Craig Stammen told reporters on Wednesday that San Diego’s Opening Day starter has been diagnosed with a flexor strain (link via AJ Cassavell of MLB.com). The righty is being shut down for an indeterminate period.
Stammen said the absence will be measured in “weeks and maybe months.” The manager and pitcher each expressed confidence that Pivetta will be able to return this season. That suggests they’re hopeful he’ll avoid any surgical procedures.
Pivetta was also diagnosed with a flexor strain while a member of the Red Sox in April 2024. That was a mild strain and he recovered quickly, returning to action a month later. This one will seemingly result in a longer absence. Those are the only two non-viral injured list stints of Pivetta’s big league career. Durability has traditionally been a strength.
Matt Waldron will be activated from the injured list on Friday or Saturday to replace Pivetta in the rotation. It’s an alarmingly thin group behind Michael King. Righty Randy Vásquez is now up to #2 on the depth chart, followed by Walker Buehler and Germán Márquez. They’re already without Yu Darvish for the season and have uncertain timelines for Pivetta and Joe Musgrove.
Griffin Canning should be back a couple weeks from now to take one rotation spot. Any of Buehler, Waldron or Márquez could be pushed from the group once Canning is healthy. Waldron made one MLB start last season and had a 6.48 ERA over 21 appearances in Triple-A. Buehler and Márquez were reclamation free agent additions. They’ve each had one good start and two clunkers in the first three turns through the rotation.
Depending on the injury’s severity, this could also have an impact on the upcoming free agent class. Pivetta can opt out of the remaining two years and $32MM on his contract. That’d be an easy call if he’s healthy and pitching anywhere close to last season’s level.
So he’s just not flexorble at all.
Excellent writing on Pivetta this time, the last article by Deeds didn’t mention the prior injury or the clause in the contract.
Good chance Pivetta becomes a free agent next offseason, he would likely have lots more teams interested.
If he needs TJ or something similar no way he leaves 2/$32m on the table.
LFG – Agreed, I’m talking if he returns like around end of August.
If he gets TJ his player option becomes a club option. Any injury resulting in 130 consecutive days on the IL flips the option. So idk if Padres take the risk with their budget crunch.
@Incident Good point on the “130 consecutive days” clause. But their budget crunch has no bearing on whether or not they pick up that option. Steve Cohen wouldn’t pick up that option if Nick Pivetta couldn’t beat it in free agency.
There is no budget crunch. Near the end of spring training both John Seidler the managing partner and Erik Greupner the CEO said that Preller has the payroll flexibility to go after any player he feels is a fit regardless of the price. That was after they announced that the team was for sale.
I’m staying out of the discussion about whether or not there is a budget crunch (or to what extent). All I’m saying is that if Nick Pivetta misses 130 consecutive days and his player option is converted to a club option, the presence of a budget crunch (or lack thereof) has no bearing on whether or not the Padres would exercise that option. If Nick Pivetta couldn’t beat the value of the option in free agency even Steve Cohen wouldn’t exercise it just because he can theoretically afford to.
It’s a very cheap, team option on Pivetta too (I think it’s around $2-$3M), so if Pivetta does go under the knife eventually, SD will absolutely pick up that option since it is well below market value and Pivetta would be long recovered from any surgery by then.
Franco >>>>>>>>>>>> Deeds. If you get even a few facts correct and half the relevant info from Deeds it’s his very best. Franco is a good writer.
Trevor Bauer says hi
100 years league minimum AAV and we can opt out any time we like.
Giolito more likely….
Buck Fauer can stay on Long Island. FYI, he sucked last year in NPB.
Regardless of any possible off the field issues, he was arguably the worst pitcher in the NPB last year.
Even Trevor himself said its never happening, that ship has sailed.
That ship didn’t sail, it sunk.
The Padres are more likely to bring Mike Clevinger back than even consider Bauer. I’d imagine Bruce Hurst has a better chance of pitching for the Padres again than Bauer has of ever signing
“Even Trevor himself said its never happening.”
Where?
In reply to a comment on his YT channel, “i faced every level of mlb hitter” is the video title if uou wanna lopk it up. JPG14075 said “get this guy back in the league” Bauer replied “mlb will never allow that to happen”
Who? A 35 year old with a horrible PR impact who had the 2nd worst ERA of any starter with 20 or more starts in the NPB last season and couldn’t even get a contract there for 2026?
Just finished listening to the press conference and its interesting that Stammen says that the Padres are not looking for help outside the organization after Pivetta went down.
They have “options”
Waldron
Canning
Sears
Gonzalez
McKenzie
I’d love them to give Wolf a shot instead of Waldron
Pair Wolf with Marinaccio see what they can give you
Looks like Wolf threw a 3 inning opener for their El Paso AAA team yesterday.
What an incredible game tonight. Padres must lead MLB in walk off wins.
In the pre-game Stammen seemed pretty sure that Pivetta would be back this season. Weeks, maybe months until he returns. Still very serious, but not season ending. He said again that the team would be staying in house to fill in for Pivetta and they are confident about those guys. Especially with Canning returning soon and Musgrove behind that.
Canning starts tomorrow for the Chihuahuas at the Round Rock Express. He went 61 pitches in his last start, so one more after tomorrow and he should be good to go.
I was at that game last night. They just never gave up and the fans didn’t either. Incredible to see 98% of a fans at a Wednesday night sell-out still in the park at 9:30 pm down 6-2 in the 9th. Merrill Madness again (the HR robbery, the game winning double), but the hit by Campusano on 0-2 count against an elite closer was just as impressive to me.
The Padres offense seems to be hitting full stride right at the point their best pitchers are hitting the IL. Trader AJ to the rescue for a really good starter?
Exciting baseball. Crowds are electric. It was a playoff atmosphere in the 9th last night.
Don’t look now but Campusano is hitting at almost the same level he was for the Chihuahuas last season.
Moon needs to be either optioned or called up today I think. Who do you think gets cut?
Tony Gonsolin maybe?
When I read the article initially I thought Waldron must be awful. Then I looked at his AAA numbers this year and his numbers in the majors in 2024 and he looks like he was a decent back of the rotation starter in 2024 and he has a 0.00 ERA in his first 3 starts for their El Paso affiliate so far this season. That is remarkable in the PCL even if it was only 3 starts. Starting pitcher ERAs average over 5.00 in that league most seasons. Padres fans, what do you know about him? Am I missing something?
Waldron really helped to stabilize the rotation in 2024 and until later in the year he was surprisingly one of their better SP that year. He kind of imploded down the stretch, potentially from arm fatigue since he logged more innings that year than he ever had before. When he’s bad, he can get hit really hard.
He’s a knuckleballer, but not like Tim Wakefield where he would throw his knuckleball like 90% of the time. Waldron throws the knuckleball less than half the time and then mixes in a few different kinds of fastballs and a sweeper(maybe slider I forget). He throws the fastballs a decent amount and they really don’t grade out very well, probably because in the past he’s been around 88-90mph on them. Basically, he gets by on command and deception because his stuff isn’t great.
It looked like in spring he had some additional velocity on his fastballs, so the hope is that if he has picked up a couple of mph on his fastball and sinker etc… they’ll be more effective moving forward. Personally I also think he should throw more knuckleballs. Interested to see what he looks like this weekend.
He has cut down on the use of his knuckleball. About 30% this year for El Paso. He has been sitting 91-92 on his 2 FBs so far this year.
Waldron went 5 innings of 2 hit shutout ball at a mile high in a game against the Rockies farm club in Albuquerque. I didn’t see the game, but doing that are what is essentially the same altitude as a game at Coors Field is impressive to me.
Waldron is also all that’s left of the Greg Harris trade tree.
You didn’t miss anything. The first half of 2024 Waldron had a 3.71 ERA with a 3.83 FIP and was one of the better pitchers on the Padres staff. He had never thrown more than 110 innings in a season before then and it seemed like he ran out of gas in the 2nd half. In 2025 he tried throwing almost exclusively the knuckleball and that was not a good move. This season he is throwing 5 different pitches with the knuckleball about 30% of the time and has picked up a small amount of velocity on his FB. The bigger gaps in velocity between pitches and the variety of looks batters are seeing seems to be helping him.