Every Team Could Use a Matt Waldron

Every year, we like to make a lot of assumptions. The range of these assumptions touches on everything from the quality of a movie based on its 30-second trailer to the result of an election based on a given set of polling data.

But really, all of these things are anybody’s guess. We put on a façade of crystal-ball-wielding, Will-Hunting-level expertise when we’re really just using a pinball machine and hoping it hits the right bumpers. 

Sports are perhaps one of the most prominent, and humorous, avenues for which this arises most often. And baseball, with all its statistical advancements, seems to have a particular monopoly on it.

Still, every team needs the unexpected to occur; they need the players who don’t have million-dollar Nike deals or Gatorade commercials to step up.

To that point, despite the star-studded talent of the San Diego Padres, it’s been the emergence of Matt Waldron that might be having the most profound impact on their season. 

Heading into the year, many believed the Padres were in dire need of starting pitching help. This assumption actually turned out to be true, as starters Joe Musgrove and Yu Darvish — who are currently on the IL again — were either injured or ineffective.

Sure, Michael King eventually found his stride, and the team did trade for Dylan Cease just prior to the season opener. But Cease has had some bouts of struggle (4.98 ERA in June) and King was, again, quite brutal in the early going.

That’s where the Knuckleball Extraordinaire comes in, who has settled into being, at times, the most reliable pitcher in the Padres rotation.

Ever since his implosion against the Diamondbacks way back on May 5, Waldron has carried a mightily impressive 3.02 ERA. That’s, in a word, good, especially for a guy who came into the season as the Padres’ fifth starter. 

And just from a pure enjoyment perspective, who doesn’t want to see a knuckleball? Especially one that’s effective, even against some of the league’s best hitters like Steven Kwan: 

via MLB on Apple TV+

Waldron’s ability to throw a quality knuckleball is a major advantage, simply due to the fact that hitters are so unfamiliar with it.

Opponents are hitting only .225 against his knuckleball and whiffing at a solid 28.2% rate (up from 24.7% in 2023). The pitch has also steadily risen in velocity as the season progresses. And, plainly speaking, the knuckleball is just fun. 

Who are we, as mortals, to oppose Sir Mahomes? We’d be fools, of course, and as an appreciator of baseball, it’s hard to not enjoy this mini-renaissance of a pitch that hasn’t been this relevant since R.A. Dickey wrote Throwing Strikes. 

What makes Matt Waldron more than just a novelty is the improvement of his secondary offerings, namely his sweeper. The pitch carries a run value of +6, which ranks sixth-best among all sweepers this season (per Baseball Savant).

Even more impressively, just like his knuckleball, the velocity on Waldron’s sweeper has seen a rise throughout the season:

Remember what I mentioned about his dreadful start against the Diamondbacks and all his success since? Waldron’s ERA drop coincides with the uptick in velocity, which is neat. 

But even more neat is when Waldron is especially on and able to attack the left side of the plate. Waldron’s sweeper has an xWOBA of just .136 on the left-most third of the strike zone — tops among all pitchers who have thrown at least 50 pitches in that area.

Even if he’s not always generating as many whiffs as you’d like, his sweeper is a brutal pitch to try and navigate on top of his zany knuckleball:

And the same goes for the right third of the plate, where his sweeper is surrendering just a .205 xwOBA.

While opponents have hit his knuckleball more effectively on the right side than the left (.311 xwOBA on the right third, .222 xwOBA on the left third), the whiff rate on the right third (32.8%) makes up for it:

At his best, Waldron can be a true terror on both sides of the plate. He doesn’t quite have the tools to be an ace of any sort, but his ability to generate soft contact (84th percentile in hard-hit rate, 72nd percentile in average exit velocity) makes him more than capable as a back-end starter.

In fact, that’s another aspect of Waldron’s story that makes him so captivating: his pre-season status. 

On the whole, the Padres aren’t exactly known for developing pitching. You could trace that back to the Andrew Cashner days, or even more recently with the rather tumultuous path to the majors for their former top prospect MacKenzie Gore.

Fans might remember the Padres were so desperate for pitching help that they were forced to sign over-the-hill starters Vince Velasquez and Jake Arrieta back during their epic 2021 collapse.

Heck, sources have even told the writer of this piece that other teams regularly target pitchers within the Padres organization, knowing that San Diego has often been unable to maximize their capabilities.

This makes the rise of Matt Waldron all the more sudden, as he may already be the best case of pitching development the team has seen in quite a while, especially when it comes to starters. 

Every contending team needs a random fellow to step up. For the Padres, it has somehow been a knuckleballer of all people. Weren’t they supposed to be an endangered species?

As it turns out for the Padres, Waldron has shown that the knuckleball is back with a vengeance.