Padres Make their first Offseason Move...

at it, making signings, getting things going, cooking up things in the off-season, talking about what we're going to do with Joe Musgrove. We've got to get to multiple Padres updates on today's episode. What's going on, everybody? Christian Pedersen back with another episode of Padres Digest, the show where, look, we're going to say some crazy things about bringing up some prospects, and sometimes the off-season content is going to get a little wonky and hypothetical, but nonetheless, we're going to have fun with it, and we're not going to wallow in despair. We're going to enjoy the Dodgers losing. We're going to make conspiracy theories that the Dodgers are tanking intentionally so that there's no lockout in small markets, this, that, and the other. And then we're going to bring it on home, like I said, with some Joe Musgrove discussions today. If you want to like, subscribe, comment, share, follow, all those other YouTube buttons, always greatly appreciated if you want to follow along. The first thing to talk about today is the apparent decision that has been made to not have surgery for Gavin Sheets. his plantar fasciitis the uh the treatment right now seems to just be that they are going to let him rest and recover the quote from AJ Preller that was circulating in the Union Tribune ostensibly just said that they're confident that if he gets a little bit of rest and recovery and then doesn't respond that he can still get surgery and recover in time for spring training got one more year of Sheets on the contracts before having to let him be a free agent or sign up to something longer term i like Gavin Sheets i don't have an issue with keeping him around i think that it's better when he is a platoon backup player and a DH and a pinch hitter and something like that as opposed to being our starting first baseman so i would like to see other moves be made but that being said i i don't suffer personally from plantar fasciitis nor am i a doctor nor did i stay at a Holiday Inn last night but i am a little leery of of the um we're just gonna let it rest and wait and see thing being something that then we get a little bit closer and it's like oh he's not really responding to the treatments and then it's a surgery and then it's recovery and then it's well he's gonna miss the beginning of spring training and it just kind of eats into the season so gotta trust in that they've got that one uh adequately medically evaluated but it put that as a a maybe right now just like a four out of ten on the level of concern but nonetheless something that i am following all season the first move of the off season padres sign a japanese pitcher mr nagomi uh no no no gami get this though um not that aj preller listens to our show and goes okay well that's a great idea but i talked about yesterday going uh younger going cheaper accumulating young sort of uh let's take a lot of flyers on a lot of guys save some money type talent the gentleman that they have signed is a 20 year old who is not even playing professional baseball he's playing in a semi-hardball league and has limited scouting available on him has the basic assortment of four seamer cutter slider slurve splitter uh but is a low cost developmental project um lol i guess you know if it didn't work with uh bringing in sun moon song at the he's the best hitter from the kbo and i don't even kyle hart um the year before being he's the best pitcher in the kbo why not sign a 20 year old rec league dude out of japan instead it feels like a sad trombone kind of moment but at the same time i guess this is the right philosophy that if you've got to win in the margins and you've got to just accumulate a bunch of arms to be competitive and give them opportunities and uh spend big on the 789 guys and then spend little on the rest of the guys this would be the exact literal way to get through it and to it okay let's talk about the main thesis today which is what the heck are we going to do with joe musgrove we got one more year of joe's mega deal and as much as it was like great to see him come back and pitch and petco was rocking and technically he threw the last pitches of the season and he looked like he looked good it was a couple of innings after two years of him not being available for the Friars in any capacity whatsoever and so it was a it was an emotionally charged awesome moment but it was a baseball, numerical, statistical, financial letdown of a season for Joe Musgrove. But that being said, if he is back to pitching and he is back to being physically able to be on a major league roster, there is now a question of what do we do with him this season? And A.J. Preller was quoted about all year, we're hoping we can count on Joe. Now it's a conversation. We're not starting our offseason as like he's defining our as our opening day starter next year or our number three we are a thinning guy we're going to sit down with Joe himself sit down with the pitching group and the front office group and all kind of make that decision my guess is going to spring training we'll have a sense we'll know hey this is the role that's what we're going to ask him to do if we have to pivot we pivot but yeah that's one question for the off season so the the answer is there is no answer directly but if i'm reading between the lines slash injecting my opinion because i'm a blow hard on youtube um i think that the fact that Joe Musgrove's rehab process was he goes through a couple of good rehab starts but then just ultimately was not able to the the indictment was that he was not able to recover after throwing 70 80 type pitches and throwing he was throwing really hard and he was throwing really well and he was his starts were not limited in the capacity of like oh he was only throwing fastballs he was throwing his full allotment in his minor league starts and then it just was like his arm did not feel healthy and good those next couple of days in the way that he wanted to be able to feel in order to rinse and repeat as a major league starter and sustain that over the course of a season so then it was truncated down to well if he throws 30 pitches or something like that in a much lower capacity can he go every couple of days and was like okay yes he actually can do that so i get where you don't want to say to a guy who's only ever been a starting pitcher and who's it it's not like he got downgraded to the bullpen out of um oh you're this 35 million dollar guy and you're just getting absolutely knocked all over the park so we've got to do something with you joe we're sending you to go handle you know fifth inning mop-ups um it's it's a process if he comes back he's fighting back he's competitive get that you don't want to just then say to that guy okay sorry you can't be a starting pitcher anymore but i also get that you can't um you can't definitively make those decisions right now given that you got an off season worth of recovery and his arm could hypothetically be good to go in three to four months and it could just be that it took him two and a half years to recover and he's back to throwing a full assortment but i would ask based off of what we saw out of the bullpen last year or last you know the little tail end of last year joe musgrove could kind of low-key be a nasty option now there's going to be a ton of questions about do they re-sign Robert Suarez? Do they re-sign Jason Adam? How does this bullpen all sort of come together? And in looking at how does this all kind of come together, let me ask you, does having joe musgrove as the seventh or eighth inning guy, given that he's already under contract and that would not be any additional capital spent and he could then get out there, um you know say if he really truly is healthy and ready to do it in a normal reliever capacity workload of like he could be our setup guy three to four nights a week and then you know robert suarez could be the like if that 7 8 9 is musgrove robert suarez miller uh that's fantastic that's an unbelievable bullpen and then you sprinkle in Yuki coming back and David Morgan coming back and one or two you know you bring up a Tucker Musgrove like it it could i think actually as much as it might feel like a hard conversation to have with Joe look we know you want to be a starting pitcher you want to be our number one you know you we know we know we know we know we know but he could have a i dare i say a John Smoltzian sort of pivot late in his career that i would then wonder if there isn't a better market to say to him look not like let's fit you got to finish out this contract but then let's legitimately talk about you're in your mid-30s but you're throwing really well post Tommy John out of the bullpen let's keep you around for four more years and have you be that vet that helps anchor the bullpen just it feels to me like there's a lot more career longevity options and capability for him and also a better fit for the Padres because if he is throwing 97 with decent breaking stuff i'd much rather have that implemented every couple of days in high leverage situations as opposed to once every five days in a way that um you know win some lose some like a starter does and have it be okay well uh we just we ran him out there for five too many pitches on a random Tuesday in July and now he's on the shelf for eight more weeks i think that you can manage his pitch load and his work count a lot his pitch count and his workload whatever whichever one you prefer there but i think you can manage that a lot better out of the bullpen doing it that way so that's my two cents on Musgrove those are the Padres moves for today let me know what you think about all of this like subscribe comment share follow until next time talk to you guys