San Diego Padres right-hander Matt Waldron became the first knuckleball pitcher to appear in a Major League Baseball contest since 2021 on Saturday, when he made his big-league debut in a start versus the Washington Nationals (GameTracker). Mickey Jannis, who pitched in one game for the Baltimore Orioles in 2021, previously held that title.
Waldron completed 4 ⅔ innings against the Nationals on Saturday. He allowed two earned runs on four hits and a walk. He also struck out two batters and threw 62 pitches overall. According to Statcast, Waldron threw 31 four-seam fastballs (plus a sinker, 17 sliders, and 13 knucklers. Of those 13 butterfly pitches, seven induced swings and one generated a whiff.
Waldron previously spent the season in Triple-A, where he had amassed a 7.02 ERA over the course of 66 ⅔ innings. He had struck out 10.1 batters per nine innings, though he also surrendered 1.5 home runs per nine. It should be noted that San Diego's Triple-A affiliate, located in El Paso, happens to deal with one of the most offense-friendly environments in the minors. To wit, El Paso's team-wide OPS is .869, and its team-wide ERA is 6.58.
Emma Baccellieri of Sports Illustrated previously reported on Waldron's backstory:
He'd started playing around with the pitch as a kid, growing up in Nebraska, and had always been fond of it. But he'd never thought seriously about trying it in a game. At spring training in 2021, however, Waldron threw a few knuckleballs while joking around with some fellow pitchers. A team staffer took notice and made a request: Do that in front of the Rapsodo. The pitch-tracking device confirmed the desirably low spin rate, and so the team encouraged him to work on it, maybe even try it out in games. That year in High A, he began throwing it as a secondary pitch, just a few per game. Midway through the season, he got a message from the front office: What if he threw the knuckleball more often? Like, say, 80% of the time, starting the next week?
"I kind of immediately was like, Okay, sounds good," Waldron laughs. "I didn't really realize how big of a commitment it was. But fortunately it's worked out."
The Padres entered Saturday with a disappointing 37-39 record on the season, putting them in fourth place in the National League West.
