MILWAUKEE — In what might have been Matt Waldron’s final game pitching for the San Diego Padres, he threw far fewer knuckleballs than he ever had.

As strange as that was, his outing was all too familiar.

It began wobbly, and it crumbled in his third inning on a handful of hits, a walk, a sacrifice fly, a bit of bad luck and his blunder, as the Milwaukee Brewers took the lead for good in what ended up a 6-4 victory for them.

The Padres scored twice after falling behind by four runs in the fourth inning and had the potential tying run at the plate in the final two innings.

Waldron threw three knuckleballs among his 59 pitches. It was the fewest he had ever thrown in any of his 41 major league games, as a starter or reliever.

He has long battled internally over his identity on the mound — whether he is a pitcher with a knuckleball or a knuckleball pitcher. Whatever he is going forward, it will likely be in a different uniform.

It is debatable whether another team will want to give Waldron a chance. But they all will probably have an opportunity in the coming days.

The Padres are planning to have veteran Lucas Giolito, who they signed last month, make his first start for them this weekend in Seattle.

Waldron appears to be the odd man out of the rotation, according to two people familiar with the Padres’ deliberations and anyone else paying attention.

Since he is out of options, Waldron cannot be sent to the minor leagues and will likely be designated for assignment. If he is not claimed off waivers by a team that wants to see if they can make him back into the capable starter he was for about half of the 2024 season, the Padres could then assign him to the minor leagues.

Starting pitching depth is not something a team generally throws away.

But the Waldron experiment might have reached its expiration.

Since a magnificent midseason run in 2024, during which he posted a 2.76 ERA over 14 starts, he has a 9.67 ERA in his past 12 games (54 innings). He has a 9.28 ERA in five games this season after taking the injured Nick Pivetta’s rotation spot.

Officially, he wasn’t even a starter the past two times he pitched.

Bradgley Rodriguez served as the opener for the Padres again Tuesday.

As he had last Wednesday in San Francisco, Rodriguez worked a 1-2-3 first inning before Waldron took over in the second.

Unlike what he did against the Giants six days earlier, allowing a run on two hits in five innings, Waldron was teetering from the beginning on Tuesday.

A double play helped him out of a second inning in which he threw five strikes in 13 pitches before Joey Ortiz’s home run put the Brewers ahead 1-0 in the third.

The Padres took a brief lead in the fourth, when Nick Castellanos drove in two runs with a two-out single. But the Brewers scored five times in the fourth.

A one-out double began the trouble, and a two-run double drove in the final two runs of the inning. There were three singles, too. But the third of those came on a one-out bunt that Waldron fielded and turned as if to try to get the runner going to third base. By the time Waldron turned and threw to first, it was too late. The next batter hit a fly ball to center field that would have been the third out but instead was a sacrifice fly that pushed the Brewers’ lead to 4-2. Brice Turang followed with a two-run double.

A single by Jackson Chourio, the ninth batter in the inning, ended Waldron’s night — and possibly his time with the Padres.

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