Former MLB hurler Nick Martinez has re-upped with Japan’s Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters, the club announced (via the Japan Times). He’ll be guaranteed a reported $2.2MM.
Martinez, 28, landed with the Fighters last year after spending parts of four seasons in the majors with the Rangers. He obviously impressed his new club in his first attempt at Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball.
Indeed, Martinez racked up an abundance of quality innings in 2018. He tallied 161 2/3 frames over 25 starts, an average of nearly 6.5 innings per outing, while working to a 3.51 ERA with 5.2 K/9 and 2.2 BB/9.
Those K/BB figures aren’t terribly exciting, but whiffs have never been a feature of Martinez’s game. In his 415 1/3 total MLB innings, he owns a 4.77 ERA with 5.1 K/9 against 3.2 BB/9.
Oh.
Why are they fighting ham all the time? On a side note Happy belated 70th birthday to Doug Rau. A pitcher who in his prime would be earning $16,000,000 a year today.
Yeah! I’ve always picture a bunch of Samurai fighters armed with swords slashing big hams in the meat section of supermarkets.
We need to bring that concept to life, that’ll increase Baseball popularity! It’ll at least be something for fans of teams that have watch them suck every year!
As I understand it the ham is part of the name of the location so the team name is the fighters
Nippon Ham is the name of the corporation that owns the NPB team named the Fighters
I think the original comment is just a cheeker joke
This year, the ham! Next year, turkey sausage!
You always stayed on your toes watching Nick pitch, Maybe Japan and fighting ham on a daily basis will straighten him out.
Less ham-fighting, more foo-fighting.
Dave Grohl approves this post!
They missed the mark going with fighters… much easier to market them as the Nippon Ham Burglars.
How do you average 6.5 innings when innings are 3 outs ? Wouldn’t you average 6, 6.3, or 6.6 innings ?
if you pitch 6 innings today and 7 innings next start, how many innings did you average?
BAM!
They’re splitting one of the outs in half. Not unlike how you have to take an axe to every second born, to get to an average of 1.8 children per woman, in the US.
It’s the little known dark side of statistics.
Not a math major I see.