Horrid Padres streak should mean end of the road for Matt Waldron experiment

The Padres are now well past the mystery stage with Matt Waldron. He allowed another home run on May 12 in Milwaukee, part of a brutal outing in which he gave up six runs over 2 2/3 innings as the Brewers beat the Padres, 6-4. That homer stretched Waldron’s streak to 13 straight appearances with at least one long ball allowed, the longest such streak in Padres franchise history.  

San Diego has tried to massage this. They have tried to make the structure cleaner. They have tried using Bradgley Rodriguez as an opener hoping they could change the look at the top of the game and allow Waldron’s knuckleball to play as more of a second-act disruption than a traditional starter’s burden.

For one start, it looked interesting. Waldron followed Rodriguez against the Giants and gave San Diego five innings of one-run ball with seven strikeouts and no walks. That was enough to make the workaround feel worth exploring. It was not enough to make it real.  

The Padres have run out of ways to dress up Matt Waldron’s home run problem

The thing with Waldron has always been that his uniqueness buys him patience. He is the knuckleball guy. The pitcher who makes a modern baseball game feel like it briefly wandered into another decade. That has value when it works.

But when it doesn’t, the charm wears off fast. Waldron’s entire identity is built around a pitch that is supposed to make hitters uncomfortable. Instead, far too often lately, it has turned into a pitch hitters can survive long enough to punish.

And honestly, it is not just the knuckleball anymore. Nothing he is throwing is fooling enough people. When a pitcher allows a home run in 13 straight appearances, and 16 of his last 17 games, the conversation has to move beyond creativity.

Waldron deserves credit for becoming a real major league story in the first place. He debuted with San Diego in 2023, became a regular part of the 2024 rotation, and gave the Padres 26 starts that year while throwing a pitch almost nobody else in the sport was willing or able to feature. His 2023 streak of allowing a homer in each of his first eight appearances was already the longest home run streak by any Padre to begin a career, which makes this current run feel less like a new problem and more like an old one that never went away.  

The Padres have given Waldron plenty of chances. They have tried to make the experiment work because there was enough intrigue to justify the effort. But the home run streak has moved this past intrigue and into liability territory.

At some point, San Diego has to stop asking how to make Waldron work and start asking why it keeps trying so hard.

Add us as a preferred source on Google

Follow