Red Sox Had ‘Game Plan’ For Knuckleballer: ‘That Thing Is Nasty’

BOSTON — The Padres had a surprise in store for the Red Sox during Sunday afternoon’s series finale at Fenway Park: Matt Waldron’s knuckleball.

Very few pitchers in MLB history have mastered the tricky, slow, and elusive knuckleball pitch, but Waldron has it in his arsenal. That presented an inherent challenge before the Red Sox had even stepped foot on the field, although the lineup — while unfamiliar — wasn’t completely unprepared.

“I’m so glad he threw it the first pitch of the game so I could see what it looked like, but that thing is nasty,” Jaren Duran said after Boston avoided a three-game sweep with a 4-1 win over the Padres. “The game plan for me was just, honestly, see it above my eyeballs. Cause if it’s up there, I’m hoping it’s not gonna move as much as it was if it was down. So I just happened to get a pitch on it and I just happened to put a good swing on it.”

Duran made contact in three at-bats against Waldron, even going yard with a solo home run in the fifth inning to plate Boston’s fourth and final run.

Rafael Devers, too, took a trip around the bases after facing Waldron by blasting a two-run homer over the Green Monster in the first inning. The scheme from Red Sox manager Alex Cora to pile up the left-handed bats against Waldron, a right-hander, paid off — although the ex-big leaguer himself provided a simplified form of advice to an inexperienced lineup.

“I don’t think these guys have, none of these guys have seen a knuckleball probably, not that I know of,” Cora revealed pregame. “If you see it high, let it fly, I guess. That’s basically the thing, right? If you see it low, let it go.”

Waldron took home the loss (5-7) after going 4 1/3 innings, marking the 27-year-old’s shortest outing since May 5 this season. He surrendered all four of Boston’s runs, allowed six of its eight hits, and tallied just three strikeouts before being pulled from the mound.

While Cora designed the lineup’s overall plan for Waldron, the individual approaches within Boston’s dugout were dispersed throughout the game.

“Some guys are more understanding of what they wanna see and some guys it might throw them off a little bit,” Duran explained. “So it just depends on your teammate and what they like to know. I try not to go up to a guy and tell him unless they’ve talked to me before about, like, ‘Hey, what’d you see?’ Honestly, the thing was we didn’t wanna swing at the knuckleball cause we know it’s a really hard pitch to it. But we got it up and it wasn’t moving when it was up so we just put some good swings on it.”