Carlos Martínez has begun a throwing program in hopes of pitching in the Dominican Winter League this offseason, reports Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The 30-year-old didn’t pitch after undergoing surgery to repair a ligament tear in his right thumb in mid-July.
That injury brought an unceremonious early end to Martínez’s nine-season run with the Cardinals. After the season, the front office made the easy call to buy him out for $500K rather than exercise a $17M club option covering the 2022 campaign. Even prior to the injury, the two-time All-Star had struggled mightily over the past couple of seasons. Since the start of 2020, Martínez owns just a 6.95 ERA with a subpar 15.8% strikeout rate in 102 1/3 innings.
Martínez certainly won’t approach the $17M option value during his first trip through free agency, but he profiles as one of the more interesting buy-low options available. While the last couple of seasons have been very disappointing, Martínez was one of the game’s better starters early in his career. From 2015-18, he worked to a 3.22 ERA/3.58 FIP over 698 2/3 frames. He spent the 2019 campaign working in relief based on injury concerns, and he continued to thrive in shorter stints. Martínez posted a 3.17 ERA over 48 appearances out of the ’pen that year, inducing groundballs at a massive 56.5% clip.
There’ll surely be teams interested in seeing whether Martínez can recapture any of his prior form, but after the last two years, he’ll likely be limited to incentive-laden, one-year offers. It’s possible some clubs could view him as a better option in short stints once again, and Goold adds that the right-hander is amenable to working in relief in 2022. The hope would be to stay healthy with a smaller workload and rebuild his value with better numbers before eventually lengthening back out as a starter over the long term. The robustness of his free-agent market could very well depend on the quality of his stuff in winter ball, but it’s at least promising to hear he’s now healthy enough to begin throwing after a four-month recovery period.
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