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Waldron gets the call with Wacha skipping a lap due to shoulder fatigue
12:47 UTC
SAN DIEGO — Knuckleball lives.
The Padres, who need a starter on Saturday against the Nationals, plan to promote 26-year-old right-hander Matt Waldron — who will become the first regular knuckleballer to pitch in the major leagues since Mickey Jannis did it for the Orioles in 2021.
“He fulfilled the dream that I’ve had all my life,” said Waldron, who joined the Padres’ cab crew on Friday. “…I don’t even know if he’s still hit.”
Waldron’s call comes with the Padres planning to skip the start of Michael Wacha as he deals with right shoulder fatigue. Manager Bob Melvin noted that the team is confident Wacha will return to the rotation for his next round.
This left an opening for Waldron, whose arsenal also includes a fastball and a slider. He’s not a knuckleballer in the mold of, say, Tim Wakefield or RA Dickey, right-handers who relied almost exclusively on the court.
But knuckleball is a primary weapon for Waldron, and his arrival in the major leagues heralds the return of one of baseball’s fanciest offerings — a field that in recent years has been on the verge of extinction.
The 2021 season saw Jannis throw 57 knuckleballs in his only appearance. Aside from the occasional throwing position player, Statcast hasn’t tracked a knuckleball since. In the past five seasons, only Jannis, Ryan Feierabend and Steven Wright have thrown regular knuckleballs. The Padres haven’t had a regular knuckleballer since Charlie Haeger in 2008.
Waldron’s joint sits at around 80 mph – harder than most. He’s struggled this season in the friendly batting limits of Triple-A El Paso, where he posted a 7.02 ERA in 14 appearances. He notched a 2.84 mark the previous season at Double-A San Antonio. There is speculation that maybe the pitch simply plays better at sea level.
Either way, it’s completely unclear what to expect from Waldron on Saturday, including how often he’ll pitch the pitch. With the notoriously unpredictable movement of a knuckleball, Melvin noted that Gary Sánchez will have the unenviable task of catching Waldron.
A former receiver himself, Melvin broke it down like this: “You see it, you feel the pressure, you squeeze.”
Waldron, an 18th-round selection by the Guardians in the 2019 MLB Draft, was the player to be named later in the 2020 trade that landed Mike Clevinger in San Diego and sent Josh Naylor and Cal Quantrill to Cleveland . Waldron played with a knuckleball before his arrival, but it wasn’t until the summer of ’21 with the Padres that he began using the field with regularity, after the organization encouraged him to do so.
Waldron learned the news of his big league call-up on Thursday when he received a Nationals roster scout report from Triple-A pitching coach Scott Mitchell, who asked, “How are you going to attack these guys?”
The answer: Unlike any other major league pitcher.