Knuckleballer does something not seen in MLB since 2018

It’s 2023, and the knuckleball still plays in the big leagues.

Matt Waldron and the Padres beat the A’s, 5-2, on Saturday afternoon at the Oakland Coliseum. It was a fairly straightforward victory—one team trying desperately to stave off elimination from playoff contention, over another team long since eliminated.

Still, this wasn’t just any Padres victory. This was Waldron’s victory—the first in the career of the 26-year-old right-hander. And it had been a while since the last time a knuckleballer earned a win in a big league ballgame. Nearly five years, to be exact.

Waldron pitched 5 1/3 innings of two-run ball, using his knuckleball-heavy mix to induce plenty of weak contact. In the process, he became the first pitcher to use a knuckler to win a game since Steven Wright did so for Boston on Sept. 20, 2018.