Padres News: Bob Melvin Addresses Loss of Joe Musgrove to Injury
The Padres got bad news on Tuesday when it was announced that starting pitcher Joe Musgrove had fractured the big toe on his left foot in a weight room accident. Musgrove, a San Diego native and the author of the only no-hitter in Friars history, dropped a kettlebell on the toe while working out.
Padres manager Bob Melvin talked to the media on Tuesday morning about the injury and said Musgrove will miss some significant time.
“It’s gonna be a minimum of a couple weeks before he ... starts throwing again,” Padres manager Bob Melvin said. “So we’ll see. It’s kind of tough to forecast when you have a broken toe. It’s going to be more about how it heals. Certainly, if it’s a pain tolerance thing, Joe would be one of those guys that would be sooner than later. But obviously we have to evaluate how he’s feeling every day and we’ll see where we go.”
As a right-handed pitcher, Musgrove's left foot is his landing foot, which is a better situation than if he'd broken his right big toe. The big toe is very important in pushing off but much less so in landing. Still, San Diego will want to be careful about rushing him back, because injuries to the lower body can often affect pitching mechanics in ways that can lead to arm injuries. They'll want to make sure Musgrove is entirely pain-free before he pitches again, to make sure he doesn't subconsciously compensate for the pain.
We're just over four weeks from Opening Day, so any setback right now puts the start of the season in jeopardy. San Diego has a lot of starting pitching options, and it seems likely at this point that they'll start the season without Musgrove in the rotation, at least for the first week or two. Despite the depth, the Padres are expecting Musgrove, along with Yu Darvish and Blake Snell, to anchor the rotation, so hopefully it won't be longer than that.
