Is this youngster the next closer for the Diamondbacks?
Overview
- Rating: 7.81
- 2024 Stats: 64 G, 72.2 IP, 5-6, 2.48 ERA, 1.307 WHIP, 2.59 FIP, 2.0 bWAR, 1.4fWAR
- Date of Birth: 220 July 2001 (age 22 season)
- 2024 Earnings: Pre-arbitration (Rookie season)
- 2025 Status: Pre-arbitration
Review
Earlier this week, it was covered here, that Justin Martinez was the winner of this year’s Snake Pit Rookie of the Year Award. Given the glowing report and the fact that Martinez fashioned himself one heck of a rookie campaign in 2024, it should hardly be surprising that the young flamethrower clocks in at #5 in this countdown. He is not, however, the highest ranked pitcher on the list, despite this author’s gut instinct that he would be. That reveal does not come until Friday.
As pointed out by Jim in his coverage of Martinez winning the Rookie of the Year Award, Martinez gives the Diamondbacks the sort of weapon they have never truly had before, a late-inning reliever with triple-digit velocity. This is not some borderline, upper-end velocity either. Martinez pitches comfortably in the triple digits, hitting as high as 103 mph in 2024, with 36% of Martinez’s offerings. This is the sort of arm that can bring dominance to the back end of a bullpen, cementing the final outs for playoff contending teams. Of course, in order to be such an arm, the gifted hurler also needs to have command and control of his pitches.
That’s where Martinez’s issues were put on display. Despite the wicked velocity on display from the young Dominican, a legitimate strategy for facing off against him was to simply stand in the box, ready to hit, but to then just take all of the pitches offered, unless they were centre-centre. Martinez’s walk rate of 4.5 BB9 translates to an 11.7% walk rate. That’s incredibly high for a pitcher being tossed into high leverage situations. However, this problem with walks is essentially the only weakness in the Martinez arsenal. This resulted in Martinez being quickly dismissed from training camp in 2024. Martinez arrived, showed he was healthy and showed he had his velocity. He even showed a new weapon he had, developed courtesy of former Snakes closer, Fernando Rodney. While Martinez sported a 103 mph four-seamer in 2023, it had very little movement. To counter MLB hitters waiting on that hard, straight offering to come into the middle of the plate, Martinez developed a splitter, one that tunnels well with his four-seamer. The results were almost instantaneous. Suddenly, Martinez had a new out pitch, and it made hitters looks silly – when he could land it for strikes. When he missed, he had catchers looking silly, as the velocity and dive were enough to eat up even the best of backstops, like Gabriel Moreno. Even four-seamers missing their location were difficult for his battery mates to track and keep in front of them. There’s a big difference between correcting to receive a 93 mph four-seamer and one coming in over 100 mph. After a handful of appearances, Martinez was optioned back to AAA-Reno, where he was tasked with working more on his ability to control his offerings.
A combination of injuries and ineffectiveness resulted in Martinez’s Reno stint being a rather short one. He was recalled to the Majors on 17 April. From that point on, Martinez started to make his case for higher leverage work. Initially, Martinez was used as a middle innings reliever and not tasked with high pressure situations in which his inability to limit walks would be a problem. It would not be until 23 June, in his 23 appearance of the season when his ERA would finally go over 1.00 to stay. During that stretch, Martinez found success more despite his issues with free passes than he overcame the issue itself as he sported a 5.1 BB9 in that stretch. However, as his pitches are so difficult to catch up to, Martinez managed to limit the opposition to a measly 21 hits in that span, only one of which went for extra bases (a double by the Padres Jake Cronenworth in a one-sided affair on 3 May). So, despite giving out entirely too many free passes, Martinez was still finding success by increasing his groundballs and limiting extra base hits, especially the killer home runs.
To that point in the season, Martinez had a handful of late-inning appearances, but was still clearly not a member of Torey Lovullo’s trusted back-end. That started to change as the calendar switched to July. Granted, it was also in July when Martinez gave up his first home run of the season. He gave that one up on 2 July. The next such mistake by Martinez would not come until 25 August. That would be the only other long ball Martinez would surrender all season. Martinez’s combination of strikeout and groundball stuff was turning Martinez into a dominating force in the Arizona bullpen, something that Torey Lovullo was clearly aware of.
As July continued, Martinez found more and more of his outings coming in higher leverage situations. He worked primarily as a set-up man, with Paul Sewald turning in one of the best closer seasons in all of baseball through the first half of the season. Then the wheels fell off for Sewald. That opened the door a crack for Martinez to start seeing action closer to the end of the game. Martinez took that opportunity and kicked the door in, giving Lovullo fewer and fewer reasons to not give Martinez more opportunities to pitch in the highest level situations.
When Sewald came crashing to Earth, Martinez shook off a terrible outing against the Pirates where he allowed four runs in 1⁄3 of an inning, handing the Diamondbacks an unexpected loss. The result is that Martinez pitched himself into the closer’s role for a bit, where he went 8-for-8 in save situations. Then, from the beginning of September through the end of the season, Lovullo, looking to keep Arizona’s playoff hopes alive, transitioned to a closer by committee model, one that needed very few closer appearances, some of which were covered by the recently acquired, hard-throwing A.J. Puk. Still, despite no longer closing, Martinez worked primarily as the 8th or 9th inning pitcher for the Diamondbacks. In this role, the results were something of a mixed bag, with the Diamondbacks having plenty of issues outside of the bullpen that were creating issues for the team. Down the final month of the season, Martinez went 0-1 with a save, a blown save, and a hold. 16 strikeouts in 12 innings of work over 11 games looks nice. But the six walks hurt, especially when combined with the 14 hits he surrendered, compliment largely from a ridiculous .424 BABIP. But, when not being nickeled and dimed, Martinez looked an awful lot like this.
The season came to an end for Martinez the day before the final game. In that outing, Martinez struck out one of the four batters he faced in a pristine outing. In a bit of a twist, the final batter Martinez faced in 2024 was former Diamondback shortstop extraordinaire, Nick Ahmed, who grounded out meekly to Eugenio Suarez at third.
2025 and Beyond
Justin Martinez is still incredibly young and as such, has a bright future in the Majors – assuming he can continue to limit the damage from his erratic location control. If Martinez can harness his control just a bit more, he will be a strong candidate to become Arizona’s closer of the present and future. Martinez will not even reach his first year of arbitration until 2027. He won’t be a free agent until 2030. Even with his slight stumble nearing the end of the season, if Martinez can perform like he did, but in almost exclusively high leverage and save situations, it won’t be long before the name of Justin Martinez is heard throughout the game as one of the game’s more dynamic closers. Given that Martinez will still only be 28 when he reaches free agency (unless he is extended at some point in the future), the world is his oyster. Of course, he needs to work on that control and still beat out A.J. Puk for the role of 2024 closer, but those are both very achievable goals. The harder one will be limiting the walks. But, he has shown he can find a fair amount of success, even while issuing too many free passes. This is important, as finding that relatively high level of success despite struggles will extend the length of the leash Martinez is given in order to find his footing as potentially one of the best closers in the game (in two or three more years).