Padres' Mike Shildt Opens Up About Joe Musgrove's Recurring Injury Issues

Musgrove was placed on the injured list Saturday.

David Frerker-USA TODAY Sports

The San Diego Padres placed right-hander Joe Musgrove on the injured list over the weekend as he continues to deal with elbow inflammation. Musgrove has been dealing with injuries to his right arm for a significant chunk of the season now, missing much of May as he struggled with triceps tendinitis. Now, Musgrove returns to the IL due to the same elbow.

The silver lining for the Padres is that the injury is not severe, and there is no structural issue causing the inflammation.

“Structurally, not really concerned,” Padres manager Mike Shildt said of Musgrove’s elbow, via Kevin Acee of the San Diego Union-Tribune. “He’ll continue to get imaging. We have baselines with his elbow, and the structure we feel like everything’s good. But just the repetitiveness of that inflammation, the back of his elbow, it’s not quite letting him finish his pitches like he needs to finish his pitches. So we’re gonna give him another break from it and get him back, hopefully sooner than later, but we’ll get him back at appropriate time.”

When healthy this season, the former 2022 MLB All-Star has struggled at the mound. The 31-year-old is 3-4 with a 5.66 ERA and 44 strikeouts across 10 starts. This is on pace for easily the worst ERA of his major league pitching career, which began in 2016.

Musgrove has never had an ERA above 5.00 until this season. He also two seasons that were much better with the Padres recently, posting a 2.93 ERA in 2022, and a 3.05 ERA in 2023.

Musgrove was placed on the injured list along with Padres starter Yu Darvish. With these two out, the Padres have called up Adam Mazur, who made his major league debut Tuesday against the Angels.