If not as momentous as the rediscovery of the coelacanth after a 65-million-year absence, the return of the knuckleball to Major League Baseball was still an occasion worth noting. On Saturday, the Padres recalled Matt Waldron to make a spot start, and the 26-year-old righty became the first pitcher to throw a knuckleball in a regular season game since the Orioles’ Mickey Jannis in 2021.

Waldron threw only 13 knucklers from among his 62 pitches, mixing the fluttering pitch into a more standard arsenal, but he got good results with the offering. All told, he performed respectably, allowing just two runs — both via solo homers off his four-seam fastball — in 4.2 innings to the Nationals. Unfortunately, the Padres didn’t score at all, and fell 2–0.

Matt Waldron, Knuckleball. ? pic.twitter.com/kpmpuXQKzB

— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) June 25, 2023

Where the knuckleball generally had at least one or two standard-bearers with secure spots in the majors at any time from the mid-1960s up through 2017, the pitch has become an endangered species in recent years, as I’ve noted a few times in this space. Brothers Phil Niekro (who pitched in the majors from 1964 to ’87) and Joe Niekro (1967–88), Wilbur Wood (1961–78), and reliever Hoyt Wilhelm (1952–72) all thrived with the pitch (some for longer than others), with the elder Niekro and Wilhelm both making the Hall of Fame. Charlie Hough (1970–94), Tom Candiotti (1983–99), and Tim Wakefield (1992–93, ’95–2011) became staples of the rotation if not stars, and Steve Sparks (1995–96, ’98–2004) and Dennis Springer (1995–2002) found sporadic success. R.A. Dickey took the baton from Wakefield and gave the knuckleball its last burst of prominence. He turned to the pitch in 2008 after finding little success during his sporadic appearances in the majors from ’01 to ’06, finally solidified a spot in the majors in 2010, and two years later became the first knuckleballer to win a Cy Young Award; that year, he was the only true pitcher to throw a single knuckleball in the majors according to either PITCHf/x or Pitch Info.

Dickey lasted until 2017, when he was 42 years old, but aside from him, every knuckleballer who came and went more or less hung around on the major league margins. Steven Wright, who debuted for the Red Sox in 2013, spent parts of seven seasons in the majors, but a knee injury and a suspension for domestic violence limited him to 60 innings in 2018–19, the first years of the post-Dickey era. Since then, the pitch has become the province of position players pressed into mop-up duty, with Ryan Feierabend (2019 with the Blue Jays) and Jannis the only true pitchers to try it at the major league level. That they combined for just three appearances, allowing 14 runs in nine innings, only underscored the pitch’s decline in popularity.

Hence the interest in Waldron, whom Cleveland drafted out of the University of Nebraska in the 18th round in 2019, then sent to San Diego as the player to be named later in the Mike Clevinger blockbuster in November 2020. Waldron taught himself a knuckleball way back in Little League, figuring it out with twin brother Mike, who had this to say about it when interviewed on MLB’s broadcast:

“[It started] just out of curiosity… It was one of those things that you’re like, ‘Hey, that’s pretty cool. We’ll go ahead and see what we can do, throw it around.’

“It kind of became one of those fun pitches we’d throw around when we were at practice or something, just something to mess around with. To see it work at this level … it’s unbelievable, really.”

Waldron turned some heads in Padres camp throwing the knuckleball in warm-ups in 2021, and so the team encouraged him to feature the pitch, which sat in the low 80s and contrasted well with his 92–94 mph fastball, slider, and changeup. Exactly how much he threw it is unclear, but according to Baseball America, “As Waldron got more comfortable with the pitch, he pushed its usage over 70%.” He pitched to a 4.25 ERA, walking 35 and striking out 103, in 103.2 innings split between High-A Fort Wayne and Double-A San Antonio.

Unfortunately minor league pitch usage data for Waldron isn’t easy to come by, as the pitch is so rare that auto-tagging systems usually label it as a slider or changeup; check out his spin rates for the pitch, and occasionally you’d see one that’s 2,900 RPM or so instead of sitting in the 100–400 range, where he was in his most recent start for Triple-A El Paso on June 16. According to Synergy Sports, which manually tags each pitch, Waldron threw knuckleballs just 9% of the time last year while getting smoked for a 6.26 ERA in 113.2 innings split between San Antonio and El Paso. He walked 39 and struck out 96 but served up 14 homers, including 12 in just 69.1 innings for El Paso. This year, he was up to 22% in his knuckleball usage; based on various reports and his own comments, he was throwing it more often to lefties than righties. “I use it coming out that same tunnel [as the fastball],” he told reporters.

For as sound as his plan may be, Waldron had been rocked for a 7.02 ERA, 5.34 FIP and 11 homers in 66.2 innings when the call came. Those numbers obviously aren’t impressive, but it’s worth remembering that altitude is a significant factor in the Pacific Coast League. The Chihuahuas’ Southwest University Park sits 3,750 feet above sea level; the circuit also includes high-altitude parks in Albuquerque (5,100 feet), Reno (4,500 feet), Salt Lake City (4,230 feet), and Las Vegas (3,000 feet). Not only do batted balls carry further at such altitudes than at sea level, but knuckleballs also move less. Dickey never pitched at Coors Field (and only faced the Rockies twice) but did throw bullpens there and pitched against Triple-A Colorado Springs during his minor league years. In 2012, he explained the hazards of the knuckleball at altitude to sportswriter Dave Krieger:

“It is tougher to throw at those high altitudes because there’s not much humidity for the ball to kind of resist against. At sea level… if I throw a mediocre knuckleball, well, it’s still going to move, it just might not move as sharply or as much. If I throw a mediocre knuckleball in Colorado, it’s going to be a b.p. (batting practice) fastball right down the middle that I’m going to have to either dodge or I’m going to just put my glove up for the umpire to throw me another ball because that one just went 450 feet.

Thus the conditions make it tough to take Waldron’s numbers at face value, which the Padres surely understand when they turned to him for a spot start in place of Michael Wacha; he’s been the team’s best pitcher this year, with a 2.90 ERA and 3.78 FIP, but has also been notoriously fragile throughout his career and is currently dealing with a bout of shoulder fatigue. Waldron’s stay wasn’t expected to be a long one — and in fact, he was optioned back to El Paso on Sunday — but his outing did open some eyes.

Facing the Nationals, who rank 12th in the NL in both scoring (4.13 runs per game) and wRC+ (93), Waldron got ahead of leadoff hitter Lane Thomas using his four-seam fastball, then unveiled the knuckleball on a 1–2 pitch that Thomas fouled off; as it turned out, Thomas would be the only righty-swinger to see any of Waldron’s knucklers. Two pitches later, Waldron struck out Thomas swinging at a 93.8 mph four-seamer right down the middle. After getting Luis Garcia on a first-pitch grounder, he got ahead of switch-hitting Jeimer Candelario (who batted lefty) 0–1, then threw another knuckler, this one too low. Candelario took it for a ball, then crushed a 92.9-mph middle-middle fastball for a towering 395-foot solo homer, 107 mph off the bat, the hardest-hit ball Waldron would allow all evening. Here’s a look at the two knucklers, contrasted with the two payoff pitches:

Ouch. After the homer, Waldron recovered to strike out Joey Meneses to end the inning, using three four-seamers as well as a cutter and a slider, both of which were way outside the strike zone. He kept the knuckleball on ice until the fourth inning, after working around a leadoff single by Corey Dickerson (a lefty) in the second and serving up a solo homer to Thomas on a 92.4-mph first-pitch fastball in the third; he also issued a one-out walk to Garcia but stranded him.

In the fourth, Waldron threw back-to-back knuckleballs to Dickerson, who had fallen behind 0–1; he fouled off both, took a fastball for a ball, then grounded to shortstop on yet another knuckler. Waldron went back to the pitch for three out of the four offerings to the next batter, switch-hitter Keibert Ruiz (batting lefty), who finally grounded one to second base. Here are the floaters from that two-hitter sequence:

While it would have figured that Waldron might throw a knuckleball to lefty Dominic Smith, he didn’t need to, as Smith grounded out on an 0–2 fastball. In the fifth, righty Derek Hill grounded to short on a fastball after laying off two cutters well outside the zone. Lefty CJ Abrams, on the other hand, saw nothing but knuckleballs, flying out to right field on the fourth one.

That swinging strike had 20 inches of horizontal movement, Waldron’s highest measure of the game and one of four in double digits. Here’s a slow-motion view:

Matt Waldron, Knuckleball Movement. ?

20 Inches of Run. pic.twitter.com/oS3dce5VPd

— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) June 25, 2023

Thomas took Waldron’s final knuckler for ball one before singling off a slider, at which point manager Bob Melvin pulled the rookie in favor of veteran lefty Tim Hill, who struck out Garcia. The Padres bullpen didn’t allow another run, but the lineup couldn’t muster any kind of heat, managing just four hits, all singles, and failing to take advantage of an additional four walks against starter Josiah Gray. The Nationals bullpen retired all 11 batters it faced, six by strikeouts.

All told, Waldron threw 27 four-seamers, 14 sliders, seven cutters and a sinker to go with his 13 knuckleballs. He got five whiffs and 10 called strikes with the four-seamer, which averaged 92.3 mph and topped out at 94.4. He got just one whiff out of seven swings via the knuckler, whose velocity ranged from 76.3 mph to 84.2 mph, as well as two called strikes; he had a 23% CSW for that pitch, compared to 37% for the fastball and 29% overall. Batters did chase three of the eight floaters he threw outside the strike zone (37.5%, and it’s worth noting that none of them escaped the reach of catcher Gary Sánchez, who was handling the pitch for the first time), but they also made contact with all five in the zone, though the only ones they put into play were the outs of Dickerson, Ruiz, and Abrams. Those three had an average exit velocity of 89.7 mph, an xBA of .137, an xSLG of .160, and an xwOBA of .125, though his overall marks — 92.2 mph exit velo, .294 xBA, .574 xSLG, .383 xwOBA — obviously weren’t as good. As his 50% hard-hit rate and 6.35 xERA attests, Waldron needs to do a better job of limiting hard contact if he’s to survive.

As for the knuckleball itself, the total of 13 that he threw on Saturday was fewer than those of seven position players who have broken it out for their mound cameos during the pitch-tracking era (2008 onward), not to mention all nine of the other pitchers who did so. Excluding the bastard sons of Wade Boggs, here’s how they stack up:

Waldron’s knuckler rates as the fastest in terms of average velocity, faster even than Dickey’s “angry knuckleball.” It’s mid-pack in terms of vertical movement, but tops in terms of horizontal movement. Unfortunately, I don’t have much in the way of direct comparisons for spin rate, since it wasn’t until Statcast switched to the Hawkeye cameras in 2020 that spin could be measured directly; Waldron’s knucklers averaged 295 RPM, which is lower than Jannis’ average of 407 but about double the ideal of 150, which translates into about one to one and half rotations from the mound to the plate. Neither Stuff+ nor PitchingBot even scored Waldron’s knuckleball, though both models really liked his slider (whose usage rate matches up with Gameday, which is to say the pitches aren’t being conflated), and PitchingBot found his other pitches to be at least average, though it didn’t score the cutter. Stuff+ saw his other pitches as pedestrian, which I believe better matches up with the general scouting perception. Small-sample caveats abound:

All told, I think it’s fair to say that Waldron demonstrated some promise with the way he used the knuckleball to keep hitters off balance, but that unless he can hone his arsenal and find a way to miss more bats, he’s likely destined to remain on the fringe of the majors rather than securing a regular job. I would absolutely love to be wrong about that, because even in his one-night cameo, Waldron’s knuckleball was a most welcome sight.

The A’s have spent most of this season as the laughingstocks of the majors. Stripped of their most talented players as ownership focused on sneaking out of Oakland, they carried a .207 winning percentage into June, putting them on pace to beat the 1962 Mets’ modern-day record of 120 losses. With their recent seven-game winning streak — remarkably timed to coincide with the Nevada state senate debating and finally approving a bill to build a stadium on the Las Vegas strip, all but sealing their fate in Oakland — they’ve edged above what we might call the Throneberry Line. All the while, the Royals, losers of nine straight and 12 out of their last 13, have actually slipped below them in terms of winning percentage, .265 (18–50) to .267 (19–52).

This actually isn’t the first time the Royals have had a worse record than the A’s this year; Oakland won its first and fourth games of the season, whereas Kansas City lost its first and started 1–6. It took until April 8 for the Royals (3–6) to move ahead of the A’s (2–6). Since then, the two teams have spent a few days with the same record and winning percentage — on April 21 (4–16, .200), April 24 (5–18, .217) and May 6 (8–26, .235) — but the Royals had never been worse than the A’s until this week:

Where the plight of the A’s has captured national attention, that of the Royals has largely evaded it. That’s largely because the team’s ownership isn’t in the process of trying to relocate the franchise, which isn’t to say it doesn’t want a new stadium. But entering Friday, Kansas City was in a virtual tie for the sixth-worst winning percentage of any team since 1901 and is playing at a pace that would produce a 43–119 record, which would tie the 2003 Tigers for the second-highest total of losses in a season, behind only the 1962 Mets’ 120. Even if the Royals can’t catch the Mets, they’ll have to play much better ball to avoid surpassing the franchise record of 106 losses, set in 2005. Read the rest of this entry »

2:03

Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks and welcome to a special edition of my Tuesday chat. I’m a few days into the annual family trip to Wellfleet  — this is the seventh year in a row that my wife, my daughter, and my mother-in-law have rented this house — and the wi-fi is a bit dodgier than back in Brooklyn, but I always like to do a chat from here if I can.

2:04	Jay Jaffe: As it’s a two-week trip, it’s something of a working vacation, with the work front-loaded. Today I did a piece on Nick Castellanos’ rebound from a dismal 2022 https://blogs.fangraphs.com/nick-castellanos-is-mashing-again

2:04	Jay Jaffe: Yesterday I took a look at the impact of Pete Alonso’s hand injury https://blogs.fangraphs.com/skidding-mets-lose-pete-alonso-when-they-c…

2:05	Jay Jaffe: Yes, we’re planning to get down to at least one Orleans Firebirds games. I think we have four to choose from in terms of their home games. Haven’t looked at rosters or fully sketched out a calendar yet.

Read the rest of this entry »

When I last checked in on Nick Castellanos, he was not in a good place. Though he was playing in a World Series with the Phillies, the team with which he signed a five-year, $100 million contract after the lockout ended in March, his season had been a disappointment, and aside from the occasional big hit here and highlight-reel catch there — the latter class of which had seemed particularly unlikely given his defensive metrics — his postseason had been bleak as well, right down to his making the final out in Games 5 and 6 of the World Series as the Phillies fell to the Astros. Fortunately, after turning the page on 2022, Castellanos has reemerged as one of the Phillies’ most productive hitters.

When the Phillies signed Castellanos, he was coming off the best season of his career, having made his first All-Star team while setting across-the-board career highs with a .309/.362/.576 line, 34 homers, a 139 wRC+, and 3.6 WAR. He had opted out following the second year of a four-year, $64 million deal with the Reds, but despite notable interest from multiple teams including the Padres and Marlins, he didn’t secure a deal before the lockout began in early December. Once he did finally agree to terms with the Phillies, eight days after the lockout ended, he felt as though he had to rush into the season, adjusting to a new team, new city, new fanbase, and new media… and with a new child on the way. Soon, Bryce Harper’s elbow injury forced Castellanos to play right field on a regular basis instead of DHing a significant amount of the time as initially planned.

Things did not go well. Castellanos matched his career-worst 94 wRC+ via a .263/.305/.389 line, set career lows with a 5.2% walk rate and 6.6% barrel rate, and homered just 13 times. He was dreadful afield (-10 RAA, -8 DRS, -7.3 UZR) as well, and while his -0.8 WAR didn’t make him the majors’ least valuable position player, none of the 31 others with WARs that low or lower — including future Hall of Famers Miguel Cabrera and Joey Votto — had just set sail on a $100 million contract. Adding further insult, in the postseason, Castellanos hit .185/.232/.246 in 69 plate appearances. Not even a few memorable diving catches could offset that. Read the rest of this entry »

It was a bad week for the Mets, to say the least. In the midst of a seven-game losing streak that began with a sweep at home by the Blue Jays and continued with a trio of excruciating losses to the Braves in Atlanta, they lost Pete Alonso, likely for at least the remainder of the month, after he was hit on the left wrist. First and foremost, the injury knocked the Mets’ most productive hitter out of the lineup. It also ended whatever hopes Alonso — the major league leader in home runs with 22 — had to reach 60 for the season.

In the second pitch of his first plate appearance on Wednesday night, the 28-year-year old Alonso took a 97-mph fastball from Charlie Morton off his left wrist. He crumpled to the ground and immediately left the game, clearly in pain despite having protective padding on his left hand. An x-ray taken that evening showed that he hadn’t sustained a fracture, leading Alonso to tell reporters, “I feel like I dodged a bullet,” but subsequent CT and MRI scans revealed that he’d suffered a bone bruise and a wrist sprain. On Friday, the Mets placed him on the injured list retroactive to June 8, with the team announcing, “A typical return to play for this type of injury is approximately 3–4 weeks.” That timetable leaves the door open for Alonso to return right at the end of June in a best-case scenario, with early July more likely.

Though Alonso had homered in each of his previous two games, first off the Blue Jays’ Nate Pearson on June 4 and then off the Braves’ Bryce Elder on June 6, and though he trash-talked Elder after what was estimated to be a 448-foot shot, the hit-by-pitch didn’t appear to be intentional and wasn’t interpreted as such by its victim. Alonso had called out, “Throw it again! Throw it again, please!” but the Braves’ rookie didn’t take issue with the taunt, telling reporters, “I mean, if I hit one on the concourse, I might holler, too.” Read the rest of this entry »

Officially, Noah Syndergaard went on the injured list on Thursday due to a blister on his right index finger. Unofficially, it might be said that he’s been blistered by opposing hitters, and sidelined by a wounded psyche. The once-mighty 30-year-old righty doesn’t have the velocity, stuff, or confidence of his early heyday, and he’s been frank about the mental toll of his struggles, which have turned him into one of the majors’ least effective starting pitchers. It’s time for a reset.

Signed to a one-year, $13 million deal under the expectation that with another year of distance from his 2020 Tommy John surgery, he could reclaim some of his lost velocity and stabilize the back of the Dodgers rotation, Syndergaard has been a shadow of his former self. In 12 starts totaling 55.1 innings, he’s been hit for a 7.16 ERA, which ranks as the highest among the 63 NL starters with at least 40 innings. His 5.54 FIP is the fifth-worst out of that group, and his 5.55 xERA is tied for seventh-worst. Both his 15.4% strikeout rate and 1.95 homers per nine are among the league’s seven worst as well. Read the rest of this entry »

If he never played another game, Mike Trout would waltz into the Hall of Fame. With three MVP awards, 10 All-Star appearances, and the number five ranking among center fielders in JAWS — all complied in fewer than 1,500 games spread across 13 seasons — he’s already accomplished more than most enshrinees. Hell, he recently surpassed Ken Griffey Jr.’s 83.8 career bWAR, in over 1,200 fewer games (he did so in fWAR early last year). So far this season, however, Trout is off to one of the worst starts of his career, and it’s fair to wonder if we’re seeing the tail end of his time as one of the game’s elite players.

Trout, who’s two months shy of his 32nd birthday, had a big night in Anaheim on Wednesday against the Cubs. In the top of the fourth, he robbed Ian Happ of a home run, then followed up by homering off Jameson Taillon in the bottom of the frame, his 14th dinger of the season. He added to his highlight reel via back-to-back pitches in the seventh inning, making impressive running catches on flies off the bats of Miguel Amaya and Matt Mervis.

Mike Trout is still pretty damn good at baseball. Read the rest of this entry »

Across a career in baseball that spanned over 40 years, Roger Craig was at various points a hotshot rookie who helped the Dodgers win their only championship in Brooklyn, the first and best pitcher on an historically awful Mets team, the answer to a trivia question linking the Dodgers and Mets, a well-traveled pitching coach who shaped a championship-winning Tigers staff, and a culture-changing, pennant-winning manager of the Giants. He was particularly beloved within the Giants family for his positive demeanor and the way he shook the franchise out of the doldrums, though it was via his role as a teacher and evangelist of the split-fingered fastball — the pitch of the 1980s, as Sports Illustrated and others often called it — that he left his greatest mark on the game.

Craig didn’t invent the splitter, which owed its lineage to the forkball, a pitch that was popular in the 1940s and ’50s, but he proved exceptionally adept at teaching it to anyone eager to learn, regardless of team. For the pitch, a pitcher splits his index and middle fingers parallel to the seams, as in a forkball grip, but holds the ball further away from the palm, and throws with the arm action of a fastball. The resulting pitch “drops down in front of the batter so fast he don’t know where it’s goin’,” Craig told Playboy in 1988. “To put it in layman’s terms, it’s a fastball that’s also got the extra spin of a curveball.”

Given its sudden drop, the pitch was often mistaken for a spitball, so much so that it was sometimes referred to as “a dry spitter.” It baffled hitters and helped turn journeymen into stars, and stars into superstars. After pioneering reliever Bruce Sutter rode the pitch to the NL Cy Young Award in 1979, pitchers such as Mike Scott, Mark Davis, Orel Hershiser, and Bob Welch either learned the pitch directly from Craig, or from someone Craig taught, and themselves took home Cy Youngs in the 1980s. Jack Morris, Ron Darling, and Dave Stewart won championships with the pitch, as did Hershiser. Years later, the likes of Roger Clemens, David Cone, Curt Schilling, and John Smoltz would find similar success with the pitch, though it eventually fell out of vogue due to a belief that it caused arm problems, an allegation that Craig hotly refuted.

Not that Craig was a hothead. Indeed, he was even-keeled, revered within the game for his positivity. Such traits were reflected in the tributes paid to him after he died on Sunday at the age of 93, after what his family said was a short illness. “We have lost a legendary member of our Giants family.” Giants CEO Larry Baer said in a statement. “Roger was beloved by players, coaches, front-office staff and fans. He was a father figure to many and his optimism and wisdom resulted in some of the most memorable seasons in our history.” Read the rest of this entry »

2:01	Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks! Welcome to my first chat of June and my last one before embarking upon the annual family trip to Cape Cod

2:02	Jay Jaffe: I am battling my way through back spasms that began when I was warming up my daughter for her last Little League game (of the season for sure, of her “career” possibly)

2:03	Jay Jaffe: Yesterday I took a look at Fernando Tatis Jr’s return from his injuries and suspension https://blogs.fangraphs.com/fernando-tatis-jr-s-uneven-return-from-a-l…

2:03	Jay Jaffe: Tomorrow I’ll have a tribute to Roger Craig, whose greatest contribution to baseball was in teaching the split-fingered fastball to a generation of pitchers, to such an extent that it became “The Pitch of the ’80s”

2:05	Jay Jaffe: he’s got minor league options, time to shuffle off to Buffalo.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Padres continue to sputter along, below .500 (27-32) and outside the playoff picture. While Juan Soto has heated up, Manny Machado has extended the slump that he was in before landing on the injured list with a fractured metacarpal, and Xander Bogaerts has underperformed while playing through a lingering wrist issue for the past month. As for Fernando Tatis Jr., he’s returned from a lost season that included a wrist fracture and an 80-game suspension for using a banned substance, and while he’s been one of the Padres’ most productive hitters, his performance has been uneven, well short of his superstar-level showings from 2019-21.

The circumstances surrounding Tatis’ left wrist fracture have yet to be clarified fully, in part because he could not communicate with the Padres during the lockout, but he’s believed to have suffered the injury during one of the multiple (!) motorcycle accidents he was involved in while in the Dominican Republic during the 2021-22 offseason. He apparently did not start feeling the effects of the injury until he began taking swings in mid-February in preparation for spring training, but only after the lockout ended did the team discover the injury. He underwent surgery to repair his scaphoid bone on March 16, and his recovery took longer than expected. Four games into his rehab stint, Major League Baseball announced that he had incurred an 80-game suspension for testing positive for Clostebol, an anabolic steroid prohibited under the league’s Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program, a shock and disappointment given both his growing stature within the game and the tantalizing possibility of him joining a revamped Padres lineup.

Tatis’ suspension ran through the Padres’ final 48 regular season games, their 12-game postseason run (during which they reached the National League Championship Series after upsetting both the 101-win Mets and 111-win Dodgers), and their first 20 games of this season. When he took the field on April 20, in the Padres’ 21st game, he was 18 1/2 months removed from his last regular season major league game. That’s a substantial slice of time in a 24-year-old player’s life. Read the rest of this entry »