The Diamondbacks announced that right-hander Seth Martinez was claimed off waivers from the Astros. It hadn’t been publicly reported that Martinez had been designated for assignment, but the 30-year-old reliever will now change teams for the second time in his career.
Selected away from the Athletics in the 2020 Rule 5 Draft, all 137 1/3 of Martinez’s career big league innings have come in a Houston uniform. The righty has a career 3.93 ERA, 20.7% strikeout rate, and 9.2% walk rate, and his 2024 numbers included a 3.59 ERA, 16.2K%, and 8.1% walk rate in 52 2/3 frames. Martinez spent most of the season on the Astros’ big league roster, though after the All-Star break, Houston shuttled him back and forth from Triple-A on multiple occasions.
Martinez is now out of minor league options, which probably tied into the Astros’ decision to put the right-hander on waivers. Though he hasn’t yet reached arbitration eligibility and is under team control through 2028, the Astros felt comfortable moving on from Martinez, leaving Arizona able to pick up a controllable reliever for its bullpen mix.
There’s no risk for the D’Backs in taking a look at Martinez during Spring Training, and for now the club at least has a placeholder of a reliever in place as they look to remake their bullpen. Arizona’s relief corps was a weak link for the team in 2024, and Martinez represents the type of lower-cost reliever that GM Mike Hazen has tended to target during his time running the Diamondbacks’ front office.
Wow Houston is really off loading the bullpen. Ferguson who is a free agent, Murfee is gone. Seth now. WIll Pressley be next. See as well Cabbage has gone to Pittsburgh. And if Astros rely on Chas and Meyers for a 4th season in a row then complain in a month they have no outfield.
Will use Dubon at third if Bregman indeed gone. And first will be Singleton again with Caratini. Caratini is better than Diaz. Wonder if that will all work out. Crane and Dana cannot do much as Crane and Bagwell hogtied the spending as they played GM to get Abreu as Bagwell of course thought he was worth it. Heck he was falling from Grace in Chicago. But Bags thought wow let us go get him. He could be our guy. Even Montero he was so great in 2022 so let’s lock him up. Well didn’t work there either. I say momentum Seattle in 25
Astros have to purge quite a few players off their 40-man because they must activate 10 players off the IL, while also clearing spaces for prospects that need to be protected. The Astros have six of their Top 30 prospects eligible for the Rule 5 Draft: right-handers Miguel Ullola (No. 7), Alimber Santa (No. 16) and Rhett Kouba (No. 24), left-hander Colton Gordon (No. 11) and outfielder Colin Barber (No. 30).
Decent bullpen depth piece for Snakes.