The Giants have spent much of this season scraping the bottom of the pitching depth chart, and Yunior Marte is the latest arm to get a look after that churn.
San Francisco’s staff has been battered by the trade deadline and a second half full of injuries, pushing the club to summon a wave of young pitchers. Marte was among them, coming up directly from Double-A after turning heads in the minors. The Giants originally landed him at last year’s trade deadline in the deal that sent Mike Yastrzemski to the Kansas City Royals.
On Saturday night, Marte made his first big league start, and the broadcast booth immediately reached back into Giants history. Mike Krukow and Duane Kuiper compared him to Guillermo Mota, the tall right-hander who spent 2010 to 2012 with San Francisco and collected two rings along the way.
Mota wasn’t a headline bullpen ace for those championship clubs, but he was part of both title teams. Across his final three big league seasons in San Francisco, he posted a 4.18 ERA in 134 regular season appearances.
In the 2010 World Series, he didn’t give up a run in two appearances. In 2012, he allowed four earned runs in three World Series outings.
He also tested positive for PEDs and was suspended for part of the 2012 season.
The resemblance is easy enough to see on paper. Mota stood 6-foot-6 and was from the Dominican Republic. Marte is 6-foot-6 and also comes from the D.R.
And while neither pitcher has lived off overpowering stuff, Marte showed he can still get outs. Against the Arizona Diamondbacks on Saturday, he worked 4 and 2/3 innings and gave up just one run.
That performance matters because the Giants have reasons to keep giving him a long runway. Marte is eligible for the Rule 5 Draft after the season, so San Francisco has to decide whether he’s worth protecting on the 40-man roster or whether they’re willing to risk losing him.
If he keeps making this kind of impression, he could push his way into the Giants’ 2027 picture as either a reliever or maybe even a starter. The comparison to Mota is a neat one, but Marte now has a chance to build a track record that belongs entirely to him.
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