Padres right-hander Matt Waldron has been shut down for the time being and is considered week to week, manager Craig Stammen told the team’s beat (via Kevin Acee of the San Diego Union-Tribune). The right-hander recently underwent a procedure for a hemorrhoid.
Waldron, 29, made only one big league appearance last season, pitching 4 2/3 innings and being tagged for four runs. He tallied 26 starts for the Friars the year prior, turning in a 4.91 ERA with a 21.3% strikeout rate against a 6.4% walk rate. He posted a solid 3.79 ERA through his first 23 starts of the season in 2024 before being clobbered for 26 runs in only 18 1/3 frames over his final few appearances, ballooning his ERA by more than a full run in the process.
One of the only active knuckleballers in the majors or minors, Waldron struggled through 21 Triple-A starts last year, serving up a 6.48 earned run average. He maintained respectable strikeout and walk rates, however (20.7% and 7.1%, respectively). A .368 average on balls in play and well below-average 59% strand rate both dogged him.
Waldron is out of minor league options and thus cannot be sent to Triple-A without first clearing waivers. He can, however, open the season on the 15-day injured list and embark on a 30-day minor league rehab assignment once cleared to pitch, if the recovery from his recent procedure necessitates such an absence.
Following a late flurry of low-cost additions, the Padres’ 2026 rotation includes a returning Joe Musgrove (from 2024 Tommy John surgery), the re-signed Michael King, veteran Nick Pivetta, out-of-options righty Randy Vásquez and free agent newcomer Germán Márquez. San Diego also added Griffin Canning on a one-year deal, though he’s still on the mend from last year’s torn Achilles tendon. Lefties JP Sears and Kyle Hart are on the 40-man roster but could be depth options in Triple-A El Paso to begin the year, given Vásquez’s lack of options. Veterans Walker Buehler, Marco Gonzales and Triston McKenzie all inked a minor league deals with invitations to spring and could factor into the mix as well.
Shut down and have a seat… ok, maybe just lay on your belly for awhile.
I hope it isn’t elbow soreness or shoulder fatigue, both are the worst things to hear…
Never mind, seems it’s a sitting issue lol
And I’d much rather have shoulder fatigue!
Sit and spin
The downside of being a knuckleballer
Poor guy. Let the jokes begin
He’ll get his share in the clubhouse for sure. 🤣
This ought to be fun
It’s early S.T. Plenty of time left to PrepHare for the season.
So bad it’s good.
I think I would have told the Padres PR dept to keep that on the dl.
I once made my girlfriend buy me some prep h because I couldn’t do it myself.
It’s the IL now…
*down low
We know where it is 😉
Lmao YBC 🤣
Forgive me Padre for I…
Don’t worry my son, everyone knows
I knew he was on some kind of roids.
Only when he’s sitting down.
It must have been that burning sensation in his ….
Now his ears are burning as well.
Those dugout benches do not look conducive to rectal health.
Yeah, I would have gone with “undisclosed illness” on this one! The Padres really hit him where he hurts!
Doing him dirty! I mean… no favors!
George Brett famously suffered the same public “hemorrhoids” disclosure many many years ago.
Hopefully he can joke about it later, like Brett does now.
Been there bro. One week and you’ll be back in fighting shape.
Hopefully that sits well with him!
He’s not gonna take this setback sitting down.
In 2023 MLB The Show he was super good. I would pitch games with him online and continue to pitch with every game. Even if he had no energy, he still was good, the worse the opponent was, the better it worked.
The problem is that in dynasty mode you have to change his suppositories.
*L, R, L, R, Up, Down, Up, Down, Select, Start* while in clubhouse mode to make the towel boy do it.
Knuckleballers really do have more interesting stories, setbacks, and triumphs than most pitchers, don’t they?
This from now on casts suspicion on hockey-announced “lower body” injuries.
Can Matt Waldron’s physician prescribe Preparation H for use while at his workplace? Back-pocket size, if you please.
Guessing either of the Niekro brothers would have taken advantage of such a situation, with a doctor-prescribed tube in a back pocket and a useful layer in reserve inside the brim of their caps.
Cut your nails bro !!!!!
Waldron has always been bad in AAA; his *career* BABIP in El Paso is .359. It’s for the best that he can’t go back without be waived. He should either be in the majors or AA like Kenny Serwa (yet another knuckleballer).
Was it necessary for them to include that bit of info?
Agree. Sometimes these athletes just push too hard.
Men sharing toilets will do that
90% of comments are about the guy’s hemorrhoids. Like there’s a substitute teacher in school today…
That stuck out to you?
Like a sore thumb er hemorrhoid!
It would be insensitive to say the substitute is just sitting in.
They’re likely just in the process of shuffling him to the 60-day without really having an injury that would justify it. He’s out of options, so they need to hide him on the DL if he’s not gonna be on the opening day roster.
Looks like a case where he was just pushing too hard.
I don’t think it’s about the 60 day IL. Other than on a rehab assignment for a limited amount of time, they can’t get him down to AAA, which is where they want him as depth. They need to get him through waivers at some point.
My thought is there’s a lot of transactions going on around the end of spring training when players need to be added to rosters, so that might be a good time to try to get him off the 40 man. If he’s been shut down and doesn’t have a traditional spring, another team might be less likely to claim him.
Or it really could be that he need to have a hemorrhoid surgically removed and the recovery period on that is 2-3 weeks, likley more for an mlb pitcher, and he just needs some time to reset which will result in an IL stint with a milb rehab. It serves the team well but it ain’t like they came to him and said, “sure would be nice if you had a hemorrhoid or something that we could get removed to buy us time.”
Test
Guess when he got tagged for 4 runs and haters claimed he was just in a sour mood because he got butt hurt butt really hurt
How long is the rehab for this surgery?