Joe Musgrove Feels Like He's Letting Padres Down

The 2026 season hasn't gone to plan for veteran right-hander Joe Musgrove of the San Diego Padres, with him still yet to make his debut.

Musgrove was expected to be an anchor for the Padres' starting rotation this year after missing the entire 2025 season due to recovery from Tommy John surgery. But the veteran suffered a setback in spring training with his elbow, setting his timeline to return back quite a while.

The right-hander has been trying to get himself back to full health to take the mound, but his progress has been fairly slow.

San Diego is expecting to get Musgrove back after the All-Star break, which would provide a needed boost to this staff.

But Musgrove opened up about the entire injury recovery process, saying that he feels he has let his teammates down.

“The biggest part to me is the feeling of [letting] down my teammates,” Musgrove said to the San Diego Union-Tribune. “I know it’s out of my control. I’m doing everything I can right, which gives me a little bit of peace of mind. But there’s a lot of guys here that haven’t seen me play and don’t really know me as a person, and it’s hard to not feel like they have this assumption that I’m just kind of sitting by and letting time pass. Especially over the stretches of time where I wasn’t having any changes.

"No progress is the most frustrating thing.”

While Musgrove has wanted to return to help this team win, he also wants to make sure he doesn't come back too early.

The last thing that the veteran needs is to rush back, only to re-injure himself and be out for a longer period of time. So, both the Padres organization and he have been taking a cautious approach to his eventual return.

“It’s the hardest thing I’ve had to go through in the big leagues, for sure,” Musgrove said. “I’ve tried not to show it. I’ve done a pretty good job of compartmentalizing all the different thoughts that come through my head and really just focusing on what’s important.

"But the more time that passes — obviously, you can ignore things for so long, but you hear everything, you see things that get out there. I’ve tried to ignore it as much as possible and not think about it, but it’s been difficult.”

Even with his expected return, Musgrove will need to ramp himself back up to game shape. The right-hander has not pitched in a major league game since 2024, and only pitched in one exhibition game this spring before being shut down.

The entire situation has been frustrating for Musgrove, but there is some light at the end of the tunnel for him. Now, all the veteran can do is keep pushing forward in his progression, with the hope that he can make a difference for this team down the stretch of the season.

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