The winningest 1998 expansion franchise takes the field. 🙂
Time for another round in the fun game, “Where in the world is Justin Martinez?” Play started on Sunday, when we didn’t see Martinez in the series finale against the Cubs, even in the bottom of the 10th inning, when the team had a 3-2 lead. Instead, it was Drey Jameson – playing in his first major-league game since July 2023 – who came in and got the save. After the game, Torey Lovullo told Jody Jackson, “He was not available, he’s just a little bit fatigued. Heavy workload the first couple weeks of the season so coming out of the stay with a built in off day tomorrow, we feel like going to be 100% and ready for the rest of the season… This is just a situation where he needs a little bit of rest.”
Fair enough. We certainly don’t want to be burning his arm up before we are even a month into the season, so caution is perfectly fine. But after the off-day. Martinez was notable by his absence in Tuesday’s game as well, even though Arizona went into the bottom of the eighth with a 3-1 lead, and a potential save situation looming. The team did score twice, taking the save off the board, and allowing Juan Morillo to finish out the game. But the fact that Martinez was not even warming up for the ninth certainly drew comment. After the game, Lovullo said, “He’s close to a hundred percent, we’re just going to take our time with that,” and with the currently murky A.J. Puk situation, that would make sense too.
Today? Nick Piecoro reports Lovullo as saying, “all indications” are that Justin Martinez will be available today. “I feel very strongly that today could be the day for him to come back.” Meanwhile, no update on Puk, the team continuing to gather information. But it’s a salutary – or even salu-Torey – lesson on how quickly bullpen depth can evaporate. If you’d told me at the beginning of spring training, that in April the D-backs could be looking at Shelby Miller and Jalen Beeks as the potential closers… yeah, I’d have thought you were writing our 4/20 recap. 🙂 But it is more than two weeks since Martinez last had a save (Feb 8). The sooner he gets back in a game, the happier I think we’ll all be. Not least Martinez and Lovullo!