2023 Padres Season Review: Joe Musgrove

2023 Regular Season Statistics

2.1 fWAR, 17 G, 97.1 IP, 3.05 ERA, 1.140 WHIP, 97 K, 21 BB, 10 HR, 9 HBP

Positives From This Season

Joe Musgrove was pitching like a $20 million a year pitcher once he was finally able to be healthy for a consistent period of time this season. At the beginning of the year he was coming back from a fractured toe and then hurt his feet running on the hot turf in Mexico City so there was a lot of time spent by him just getting himself right to pitch instead of working on improving himself in between starts.

But ever since that May 26 start in Yankee Stadium he was dialed in, pitching to a 1.84 ERA in 73.1 innings to close out his season (although it was much earlier than expected). The Padres would love to have that Musgrove in 2024.

Negatives From This Season

I guess one negative was the decision to run on hot turf in Mexico but as for the kettle bell accident, it slipped while he was working out at spring training so I can’t really fault him for that. He did everything in his power to be ready for the start of the season but just wasn’t able to do it.

Then when he got into major league action he wasn’t able to give Bob Melvin six innings until his sixth start of the year but he was still sort of building up his workload.

The big negative on Musgrove was something that he couldn’t really control and that was the shoulder soreness he felt after exiting his late July start against the Texas Rangers. He was shut down for at least three weeks after an MRI revealed severe inflammation in his right shoulder capsule and then never got back to pitching in a game.

Musgrove’s injuries were definitely a factor in this disappointing season but the Padres were still under .500 the entire time Musgrove was dominating in June and July so he isn’t the one that is going to be one of the main guys blamed for what happened here in 2023.

The latest update from Musgrove that came in late September is that he has resumed throwing and will continue to play catch every few days for the next few months. He and Darvish are going to be x-factors in the success of next year’s rotation.