Steven Wright

Boston Red Sox knuckleballer Steven Wright throws during the first inning against the Rangers earlier this season.

(AP Photo/Brandon Wade)

Boston Red Sox pitcher Steven Wright, who grew up wanting to be a firefighter and majored in sociology at the University of Hawaii, considered some alternative career paths while struggling in the minors before he converted to a knuckleballer.

He even talked with his wife Shannon's father about life after baseball.

"About maybe picking up some shifts while I went (back) to school," Wright said. "He's a private contractor. He does house framings up in Santa Cruz -- San Jose area. We briefly talked about it. It was nothing in-depth but we discussed it a little bit. And I thought about going back to Hawaii. I know I can go there and get a part-time job somewhere whether it's valeting cars or whatever just to get some money while I take some classes."

Wright (5-4, 4.12 ERA) starts today for the Boston Red Sox against the Miami Marlins in Miami. In his most recent outing, he went eight innings, allowing just one run, while striking out nine against the high-powered Yankees offense in New York.

Wright, who will turn 31 on Aug. 30, also earned a win in his start before the one in New York -- against the White Sox at Fenway. He went seven innings, allowing just two runs.

The knuckleballer is beginning to make a strong case for a spot in the Red Sox starting rotation next year. But the journey that brought him to this point -- from a 2006 second-round Cleveland Indians draft pick to a Red Sox starting pitcher here in 2015 -- has been about as unpredictable as the pitch he throws.

SECOND-ROUNDER WITHOUT AN OUT PITCH

The Indians selected Wright 56th overall in the '06 draft, 15 slots before Boston was on the board, at which point they drafted Justin Masterson, who the Sox designated for assignment Sunday.

Wright, then a more conventional 21-year-old pitching prospect, featured a fastball, cutter, slider, curveball and changeup.

He threw the fastball in the low-90s as a starter and was able to reach back and touch 94-95 mph on the radar gun.

Wright struggled during his first professional season in 2007, posting a 5.67 ERA in 27 starts between Low-A and High-A.

The results improved in 2008 when he recorded a 3.66 ERA in 28 starts between High-A and Double-A. The Indians then transitioned him into a relief role during the 2009 season.

"I had really good success out of the pen," said Wright who posted a 2.48 ERA in 36 Double-A games and two Triple-A games in '09. "And then in 2010, I struggled. I'd get to two strikes and I never really had a swing-and-miss pitch. You know, like a lot of guys have a nasty slider or changeup or split. I never had that. Of my four pitches, my cutter was really good but it wasn't a swing-and-miss (pitch). It was more for contact. So if I got into a situation needing a strikeout, I didn't really have anything to go to."

It was in Manchester, N.H. in 2010 that Double-A Akron pitching coach Greg Hibbard and former major league hurler Jason Bere, serving as an Indians baseball operations special assistant, discovered that Wright did have an out pitch -- a knuckleball.

It was a pitch Wright had been fooling around with on the side since he was nine years old.

EX-MAJOR LEAGUER, WHO PREDICTED OWN DEATH, PREDICTED WRIGHT'S CAREER PATH

Wright first learned about the knuckleball while taking pitching lessons as a kid from former major leaguer Frank Pastore, who posted a 4.29 ERA in 220 career outings, including 139 starts, over eight MLB seasons.

"He threw one back at me and I was intrigued on how you can throw a baseball forward with no spin," Wright said. "He didn't really teach me -- but he showed me."

Pastore continued to work with Wright through college and into the pros.

"I remember vividly I was doing a pitching lesson with him -- and I always did tune-ups with him before spring training -- and this was before the 2010 season, I believe," Wright said. "He played with Phil Niekro (the Hall of Fame knuckleballer). ... So actually, toward the end of the session, we threw knuckleballs at each other. And he was like, 'I don't know much about it but I'll tell you what Phil Niekro told me.' And so we worked on it for about 15 minutes."

Pastore died in 2012 of injuries sustained from a motorcycle accident. The former big league hurler had his own religion radio talk show. The day of his accident he said the following on air:

"You guys know I ride a motorcycle, right? At any moment, especially with the idiot people who cross the diamond lane into my lane, without any blinkers - not that I'm angry about it - at any minute, I could be spread all over the 210. But that's not me, that's my body parts. And that key distinction undergirds the entire Judeo-Christian worldview."

Pretty eerie for sure, huh?

Some say Pastore predicted his own death. Maybe so. And he might have predicted Wright's career path, too.

During that pitching session before spring training 2010, while Wright and Pastore were throwing knuckleballs back and forth, Pastore made an interesting comment.

"He said, 'You never know what might come your way because this might be something you can fall back on,'" Wright recalled. "Lo and behold, by the end of that year, I was throwing knuckleballs."

TRANSITION TO KNUCKLEBALLER

Wright had a very tough start to the 2010 season, posting a 7.59 ERA in nine relief appearances for Triple-A Columbus. He then was demoted to Double-A Akron.

Akron traveled to New Hampshire to play a series against the Fisher Cats. Bere was there because he then lived on the North Shore in Massachusetts.

Bere and Hibbard, Akron's pitching coach, saw Wright messing around off to the side before a game throwing a knuckleball to the Akron catcher.

Wright and the catcher were wasting a little time as the catcher waited for another pitcher to come out to throw his side sessions.

Hibbard and Bere were impressed by the pitch's movement and asked Wright if he wanted to try using the knuckleball as an out-pitch.

"I had the luxury of being a second-rounder. I knew I was going to have a little bit more opportunity (in the minors despite struggling)," Wright said. "In 2010, that's when I started throwing it (the knuckleball) as an out-pitch. And from that point when I started throwing it until the end of the season, I had like a 1.50 ERA.

"So I'm like, 'Well, shoot, I can do this.' ... I had that pitch and I was able to attack the zone a little bit more. I didn't have to be as fine. That's when I was like, 'All right, I think that this is going to keep me going for a little bit longer.'"

His career had hit a wall. But with the knuckleball added to his repertoire, his career began moving in the right direction again.

FULL-TIME KNUCKLEBALL FUN

It wasn't long before the Indians asked him to become a full-time knuckleballer.

Wright felt a little unsure about it at first. As he said after his start at Yankee Stadium, "I wasn't even sure it was going to work out when I started throwing it. I was pretty close to just giving it up because it's such an unpredictable pitch."

Wright eventually accepted the challenge because it was his best chance of getting to the majors. Being a career minor leaguer and a family man weren't going to both happen.

Minor leaguers live off their signing bonuses. They don't earn lucrative salaries like major leaguers do.

"That's why when we got pregnant it was just like, 'Man, I can't be making $10,000 a year and support a family,'" Wright said. "You live off your signing bonus as much as you can. But it's one of those things: I had money put away. ... I mean, I was going broke but it was going a little bit slower than some of these other guys because I was blessed to be a second-rounder (with a lucrative signing bonus).

"But it was one of those things, I didn't want to have to tap into all of it," Wright added. "It was more for the future vs. now. I just didn't think it would take me freakin' seven years, especially being a college guy. Obviously you really can't plan out when you're going to be in the big leagues because it just never works out that way. Some do. Most of the time it just doesn't happen. But I still didn't think it was going to be seven years."

Wright is 30, still is considered a rookie by Elias Sports Bureau and with a non-strenuous pitch like the knuckleball, he could have a very long career ahead of him. What could be better?

He has worked hard and taken advice from every knuckleballer he has come in contact with. Longtime Red Sox knuckleballer Tim Wakefield has shown him how to throw the pitch at different speeds.

Wright also has a lot of late sink to his knuckleball.

pretty insane movement on this knuckleball from steven wright #redsox pic.twitter.com/GcyFCG5OJG — Joon Lee (@joonlee) August 5, 2015

"I just feel like when I have my good knuckleball I get more groundball outs than I do flyball outs because usually it goes in a downward angle," Wright said. "Usually they hit the top part of the ball vs. the bottom part of the ball."

Follow Christopher Smith on Twitter @SmittyOnMLB