The San Diego Padres welcomed reliever Jason Adam back to the mound, but Yuki Matsui will miss Opening Day.
The San Diego Padres’ bullpen has a lot of moving parts and pieces right now, so there are plenty of “good news, bad news” items to go around. AJ Cassavell of MLB.com posted a useful update about the state of the ‘pen at the moment, so let’s see what he came up with and where things stand.
Start with the good news. Adam returned to the mound on Friday in a Cactus League loss to the Colorado Rockies, 9-3, at Peoria on Friday, but the loss was especially irrelevant given Adam’s performance.
Cassavell described his performance as “efficient and effective” as he worked retired three in a row in the sixth inning with a pair of pop-ups and a strike out. Even better, his fastball sat at 94-95 mph, which means the bullpen just got a big boost.
“This is the fun part of baseball, competing against another guy, trying to get him out,” said Adam. “Getting to do that again was just a blast.”
Adam is expected to pitch another inning on Monday, and assuming there are no setbacks or lingering soreness, the Padres will have a tricky decision to make. The reliever hasn’t gone through the standard buildup after undergoing surgery for a torn quad last season, so he would be limited and unable to pitch on back-to-back days at the start of the season.
But Adam is an All-Star caliber on a team with a new closer, and the Padres would love to start the season with the powerhouse combination of Adam and Mason Miller to finish games. Cassavell described this call as a tossup, but he also noted that the Padres have two off days in the first week, so there are plenty of options to cover Adam’s unavailability, assuming the starters can post solid outings.
“In my mind, I’m ready,” Adam said. “But [the Padres] have done right by me this whole process. So I’m going to trust whatever they decide.”
The concomitant bad news is that reliever Yuki Matsui will likely start the season on the 15-day injured list after straining his adductor back in February. Matsui has been throwing bullpens since early March, and while he could face hitters on the back fields, manager Craig Stammen said it’s unlikely that he’ll get any more Cactus League action.
That creates a competitive logjam among Kyle Hart, Logan Gillaspie, Bradgley Rodriguez and Ron Marinaccio. Rodriguez has had an especially strong spring, while Marinaccio is out of minor league options.