The Rangers had a homecoming with Chris Martin late last night

The Rangers’ busy offseason continues with their biggest acquisition (albeit literally) ever: right-handed pitcher Chris Martin. It’s a nice landing spot for the 38-year-old reliever, who was born and raised in Arlington and previously spent a season and a half with his hometown team in the late 2010s. These connections are more than just curiosities; Martin was reportedly so eager to return to the place of his birth (kind of like a salmon) that he signed up for the legendary hometown discount: $5.5 million in one year. That’s a 42% cut from his salary with the Red Sox last season.

At 6-foot-8, he is also one of the very few active players who can look GM Chris Young in the eye. Here’s a fun fact from the Department of I looked this up, so you’ll hear about it: There are 52 right-handed pitchers in major league history who were listed at 6-foot-8 or taller. Four of them are named Chris and the Rangers are halfway to collecting the complete set. If Texas next trades for Cardinals righty Chris Roycroft, Chris Volstad will surely be waiting on the phone waiting for a call for a scouting job.

Martin didn’t reach the major leagues until he was almost 28, and even then he was with the Rockies, so that only matters a little. After a two-year stint in Japan, he re-established himself in the big leagues in his first stint with Texas, and has mostly been a solid mid-to-high leverage arm ever since. He also won a World Series with the Braves in 2021.

Martin is neither a workhorse nor a guy with knockout stuff. His career high in innings is 55 2/3, his fastball is in the low to mid 90s and he has no breaking balls worth talking about. What Martin has is the kind of three-fastball-and-one-changeup repertoire (my favorite Hugh Grant comedic role) that basically doesn’t get old if you can command it.

Martin throws a pitch with motion from the glove side — his cutter — high in the zone, plus a sinker and splitter down low, and a four-seamer with good run from the arm side just about everywhere else. As far as command goes, when Martin was at his best he posted absolutely minuscule walk numbers. AL Rookie of the Year Luis Gil before last year’s All-Star break walked more batters than Martin did in his entire major league career, which spans nine seasons and 369 plate appearances. Among active pitchers with at least 300 career innings, Martin has the second-lowest BB% and BB/9 ratios; either way, he trails George Kirby by a small fraction of a point.

He’s not exactly Emmanuel Clase, but for $5.5 million Martin is definitely worth a spin. As for his role, Martin has never been a capital C full-time player, but he is a veteran who throws a lot with high leverage. I doubt he would go crazy and melt down if the ball was passed to him in the ninth.

The big steed comes off a mixed two-year stint with the Red Sox. In 2023, Martin felt the warm, comforting favor of BABIP and the strand rate gods, and posted a 1.05 ERA in 55 appearances. Things were a little stormier in 2024; Martin’s ERA rose to 3.45, but his FIP only rose from 2.44 to 2.78. Martin is the classic candidate for the unlucky rebound.

And Young’s club could reap some low-hanging fruit.

Last year’s Rangers didn’t have as bad a World Series hangover as it seemed — they were actually two games above .500 from July 1 on — but things didn’t go well. There were injuries, baffling collapses by star players, and even the bullpen was truly awful. The Rangers were 25th in the league in relief WAR, 23rd in K-BB% and 27th in ERA-. That futility came despite an absolutely stellar season from closer Kirby Yates.

Now, the Rangers bullpen has been pretty shaky on their run to the World Series in 2023, but Young’s tolerance for relief shenanigans has worn thin. When I talk to people frustrated with their team’s performance, I often ask if they really want to trade everyone or if they’re just angry. Well, Young seemed really tired of looking at the stupid faces of his rescuers, because he had gotten rid of them all.

Truly. The 2024 Rangers had some pretty big names in their bullpen; not just Yates, but David Robertson and José Leclerc, and they’re all gone. Well, they’re all free agents, anyway. It’s possible one of them re-signs, but Young has been busy adding new members to this bullpen and there are few spots left available. As it stands now, though, of the seven pitchers who threw the most innings in relief for the Rangers last year, six are no longer with the organization. (Congratulations, Jacob Latz, you survived the Great Cull.)

Martin enters the equation because Young, after giving away virtually his entire bullpen, needed to build a new one from scratch. It did so, gradually, over the course of the winter. Since mid-December, he has traded for Nationals left-hander Robert Garcia and signed free agent relievers Jacob Webb, Shawn Armstrong, Hoby Milner and now Martin. (Milner, who somehow turns 34 next week, is also a local: He was born in Dallas, attended high school in Fort Worth and played in college for the Texas Longhorns.)

So yeah, those guys, plus Latz. Plus Josh Sborz, who will miss much of early 2025 after his shoulder underwent one of the crudest procedures in the surgical lexicon: debridement.

What should we do, then, with this completely redone bullpen? To the extent that there is an obvious and coherent plan here, it appears that the Rangers have been binging on pitchers who meet one or both of two criteria: they either massively underperformed their FIP last year and/or are cheap.

Well, that is definitely a collection of pitchers filled with various qualities and attributes. Ideally, this shouldn’t be a major point of friction for a club with Nathan Eovaldi, Jacob deGrom and enough huge bats to fill a flying fox sanctuary. But if that’s the case, and he fails, there’s good news: It will be pretty easy for Young to flip the entire bullpen again next offseason.