Martin is a name that Rangers fans should be familiar with as he spent 2018 and half of 2019 with the Rangers before being shipped off to the Atlanta Braves. He was pretty good in that time as he posted a 1.5 WAR and a 1.6 WAR
Performance Last Year
Martin posted a -0.1 WAR last year with the Rangers. He posted a 2.98 ERA with 43 strikeouts compared to eight walks in 42.1 innings. He dealt with a couple of injuries last year and that limited the total amount of innings that he played.
He dealt with a left calf strain and right shoulder fatigue which at first was feared to possibly to be Tommy John. Martin is getting older, so it makes sense that he deals with more injuries as his body starts to break down a bit.
According to the advanced stats, Martin still did a lot of things well despite his age.
Due to the missed time due to injuries, Martin was not qualified according to Baseball Savant.
The chase percentage was elite with 35.4 that ranks near the top of the MLB. His walk rate was also elite with it only being four percent. Those were the only two advanced stats that stood out for Martin.
His XERA was average at 3.85. It was higher than his actual ERA which shows that he was getting a bit lucky. It definitely helped to have the Texas Rangers’ defense behind him as they were the best in the MLB and took home the gold glove award for a team this past year.
His strike percentage and ground ball percentage are also some stats that stick out as slightly above average for Martin.
His whiff rate was his worst stat at 21.8 percent, the stats near it are his barrel rate and his hard hit rate which shows that when he is giving up contact he is getting hit hard. Despite all of this Martin was still able to put up good numbers.
Pitch Mix
His cutter is his most used pitch at 36.2 percent with it averaging 91.4 miles per hour. He didn’t have great success with this pitch as batters hit .310 against it. It generated the second highest put away percentage and whiff percentage of all his pitches. It was also in a three way tie for the pitch with his most strikeouts.
Next up is his four seamer which he threw 30.9 percent with better success compared to the cutter with a .231 batting average against it. This pitch also got 14 punch outs. However the put away percent only came in at 14.7 percent and the whiff rate being 19 percent.
His third most thrown pitch was his split finger with 18 percent usage. This was his best pitch last year with his highest put away percentage at 25.9 percent and highest whiff rate of 28.9 percent. It also racked up 14 strikeouts like the pitches before it. Hitters only managed a .200 batting average against it.
His fourth pitch was his sinker used 13 percent of the time with a .357 batting average. That looks awful, but the numbers show that he was getting pretty unlucky with only an expected batting average of .247. It only got one strikeout with a put away percent of 9.1 percent and a whiff rate of 21.3 percent.
His final pitch is sweeper which he threw 1.9 percent of the time. It was a good pitch with only a .200 batting average against it, however it had an expected batting average of .279 which shows that he was getting lucky. It was not great with 0 put away percentage and whiff rate. It makes sense that it was the pitch that he threw the least.
Verdict
I think that Chris Martin is a solid pitcher, but I think that the Rangers should let him walk. The big reason is for how much he’ll get in free agency, he is projected to get $6.7 million a year according to Spotrac. I think that the money could be used on two relievers instead.
