Michael King Unlikely To Return Prior To All-Star Break

TODAY: King addressed reporters (including Jeff Sanders of the San Diego Union-Tribune) about his status, and said that he is “very confident that I will pitch by the end of the year.”  This framing isn’t exactly a relief to Padres fans since there seemingly hadn’t been any concern that King’s season could be in jeopardy, yet the righty painted a reasonably positive view about the progress that he has made to date.

“I’ve had days where I’ve been really, really frustrated with it and been really sore and felt like I didn’t get much activity that day,” King said.  “And then I’ll wake up the next day and all of a sudden [it’s] like, ’Oh my God, I feel like I can pitch in a game right now.’  So it’s taking it step by step and knowing that [the nerve] can fire when it fires, but obviously it’s that annoying process.  I’ve got a ton of confidence that what we’re doing is the correct thing to do, and I’ve felt my body progress in great ways.”

JUNE 19: The Padres have been without right-hander Michael King for nearly a month now due to a pinched nerve in his shoulder, and it doesn’t sound as though he’ll be rejoining the team anytime soon. Asked yesterday by MLB.com’s AJ Cassavell whether King would be out through the All-Star break, manager Mike Shildt replied, “I think that’s pretty accurate” before declining to put a specific target date on the star right-hander’s return.

It’s a brutal injury for all parties involved. King is a free agent at season’s end and appeared to have a chance at cashing in on a nine-figure contract in free agency after a dominant run dating back to his late-2023 move to the rotation when he was still with the Yankees. An absence of this length owing to a fairly uncommon shoulder issue does him no favors in that regard. From the team’s perspective, he’s one of their top rotation options — if not the top rotation option — and there’s minimal depth to replace him.

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King, 30, opened the 2025 season on a tear. In his first 10 starts, he logged a 2.59 ERA with a gaudy 28.4% strikeout rate, a sharp 7.6% walk rate and a 38.3% grounder rate. He averaged less than a homer per nine innings pitched, held opponents to a pedestrian 88 mph average exit velocity and had tossed his first career shutout against the Rockies on April 13. Add all of that onto to King’s 2024 season and his huge finish to the 2023 campaign, and the former 12th-round pick (Marlins, 2016) boasts an electric 2.72 ERA, 28.4% strikeout rate and 8.1% walk rate in 267 2/3 innings since his full-time move to rotation work.

With King joining Joe Musgrove (2024 Tommy John surgery) and Yu Darvish (elbow inflammation) on the injured list, the Friars have leaned on Dylan Cease and Nick Pivetta atop their rotation. Cease has had two brutal outings — including his most recent one — that have skewed his ERA, but he had an 11-start run of 3.39 ERA ball with a 30.6% strikeout rate and 9% walk rate between his two meltdowns. Pivetta, who signed a creative four-year deal after lingering in free agency for much of the winter, has proven to be a godsend. He’s cooled a bit after racing out to a 2.01 ERA through his first seven starts but still sports a tidy 3.40 mark on the season, pairing that with a 27.7% strikeout rate and 6.9% walk rate.

The rest of San Diego’s staff hasn’t been nearly as impressive. Righties Randy Vásquez and Stephen Kolek have both posted mid-3.00 ERA marks but done so with poor strikeout and walk rates (and a poor home run rate, in Vásquez’s case), creating some justifiable skepticism about their ability to sustain their respective marks of 3.70 and 3.59.

Twenty-five-year-old Ryan Bergert has looked strong through his first three career starts and pitched well in nine Triple-A starts, too. His track record is limited, however; he posted a 4.78 ERA in 98 Double-A frames a year ago and has never reached even 110 innings in a professional season. Offseason signee Kyle Hart has been clobbered for a 6.66 ERA in his return from a big year in the Korea Baseball Organization. Knuckleballer Matt Waldron ate up 146 2/3 innings with a 4.91 ERA last year but opened the 2025 season on the injured list due to an oblique strain. He was reinstated from the 60-day IL earlier this month and optioned to Triple-A where he’s made three straight effective starts. He’s likely the next man up if the Padres need another starter.

The emergence of Bergert and the manner in which Kolek has stepped up — even if he’s been shaky since two brilliant starts to begin his season — have left the Padres in a better spot than most would’ve expected upon hearing that both King and Darvish would face protracted absences in 2025. Still, with multiple rotation arms sporting ERAs that don’t appear all that sustainable, King’s nebulous injury status is all the more problematic for San Diego.

This level of uncertainty seemed hard to imagine when King was first placed on the injured list. Shildt said at the time that the right-hander “felt like he slept on [his shoulder] wrong” at that time. It’s clear now that there was something more significant at play. King is doing some occasional light throwing work, but it sounds as though he’ll need to build through a full throwing progression and a rehab stint of some note before he’s back on the big league radar. For a Padres team that’s patching over its rotation with a series of relative unknowns and a pitcher who was eyeing a major contract in free agency, that seemingly innocuous start to his absence has snowballed in a most unwelcome manner.