The San Diego Padres need pitching help, and knuckleballer Matt Waldron made some history during his rehab start.
San Diego Padres pitcher Matt Waldron is currently on a rehab assignment with the Padres Triple-A affiliate, the El Paso Chihuahuas, and yesterday he made history by being one of two starters to throw a knuckleball against the Tacoma Rainiers at Cheney Stadium.
The other was Gabe Mosser for Tacoma, and according to Jesse Borek of MLB.com, there hasn’t been a game in over 25 years and featured both starters throwing knuckleballs.
The knuckleball has become something of a dinosaur at the big league level, with just ten players having thrown one in MLB since 2008, which was the advent of the pitch-tracking era. It’s had more visibility in the minors, with 13 pitchers having thrown a knuckle since 2023.
Waldron, who is currently recovering from hemorrhoid surgery, used the knuckles for 74 percent of his pitches last year, but he’s cut down on using it for his rehab stint, perhaps because the pitch is so hard to control. His usage dropped to 25.2 percent of the time last night, and he got four strikeouts on ten swings, which is an example of how baffling the knuckleball can be on a given night. He threw in slightly harder than usual, although many knuckleballers have said the pitch is more effective when thrown slowly.
The pitch may be Waldron’s main pitch to at least some extent, it was something of a novelty for Mosser, so there’s a bit of fudging going on here with the dueling knuckleballers claim.
Mosser signed a minor league free-agent deal with the Seattle Mariners back in January, and he threw it just twice last night, getting a groundout and a foul ball. The flip side of that fudging, however, is that pitch tracking often misidentifies the knuckleball as a sweeper, changeup or splitter, depending on how it moves.
Which is also part of the problem when it comes to using the unpredictable pitch, Mosser added.
"I like to say I can control it, but I can't really," said Mosser, who’s been using the knuckleball off and on since high school. "There's little things that I can make it do. I can control it a little bit, but it kind of just has a mind of its own."
The two pitches did get a chance to talk about their knucklers and trade tips and war stories about the methods behind their madness.
“I did get a few cues from Waldron and stuff and we talked about it a little bit," Mosser said, "but his is like a true knuckleball. I hold mine like a true knuckleball, but it kind of has more top spin than his -- [mine] doesn't really shake as much. It's more of the low-spin tumble. It's a little bit different of a pitch, but still the same idea behind it."
Waldron struck out six over four scoreless innings, so he could be added to the Padres staff soon, and a welcome one at that given how thin the bullpen has been stretched so far.