Joe Musgrove goes on IL with right elbow inflammation

Yu Darvish going on the IL with neck tightness wasn’t a huge deal because it wasn’t an arm injury. Joe Musgrove though could be a different story. The Padres placed him on the IL today with right elbow inflammation.

When I see right elbow inflammation, I immediately go to the worst case scenario and that’s Tommy John surgery. The good news for now if we want to believe the Padres is that this is “precautionary” and the concern is the triceps area.

We’ve seen in the past though that things don’t seem to be a big deal but then it ends up being a bigger deal so hopefully this isn’t the case.

Musgrove wasn’t pitching like the guy fans were used to before his last outing and some were wondering if he was trying to pitch through something so perhaps there was something valid to that opinion.

Something that’s encouraging is Musgrove just had a bounce back outing against the Reds where his velocity looked fine. The 31-year-old went six innings and allowed two earned runs with nine strikeouts and no walks last Wednesday afternoon.

Musgrove obviously is one of the keys to this Padres season. Sure there’s Darvish and Dylan Cease but you need as many frontline type guys as possible and at the moment, it’s down to three instead of four (if Michael King continues to pitch like he did Saturday night).

As Kevin Acee said, Randy Vasquez might get the start on Tuesday but perhaps they go with Jhony Brito. Vasquez’s last start with the Padres lasted just 2.2 innings (4 ER).