Nick Martinez is about to do something he has never done in a long, winding pro career: make 30 starts in a season.
That may not sound like much for a 36-year-old veteran, especially in a year when more than 30 pitchers have already reached that mark in 2026. But for Martinez, this one carries real weight.
He’s in his 16th professional season, has worn six different uniforms, and has spent years living the kind of role that never guarantees a clean lane to the rotation. Yet this afternoon will bring his first career season with 30 starts.
The path to this moment has been anything but straight. Martinez was a college shortstop before the Rangers saw enough in his relief work to take him in the 18th round of the 2011 draft.
By 2014, he had broken camp as Texas’ fifth starter. He made 45 starts for the Rangers across 2014 and 2015, then bounced between the rotation and the bullpen and between Texas and Triple-A Round Rock over the next two seasons.
The Rangers non-tendered him after 2017, and his career took him to Japan.
From 2018-21, Martinez pitched for the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters and Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks. A forearm injury and immigration issues cut into that stretch, though the structure of NPB seasons meant 30 starts was never really in play anyway; pitchers there rarely get beyond 26 or 27 starts.
After a strong 2021 in Japan, Martinez signed with the Padres and became the sport’s most recognizable swingman over the next four seasons. He opened each year from 2022-25 in a rotation, only to be pushed into the bullpen at some point, and he still produced wherever he landed: a 4.10 ERA in 61 starts and a 2.94 ERA in 131 relief appearances.
The Rays gave him a one-year, $13MM guarantee last winter, and they understood exactly what kind of pitcher they were getting. As Erik Neander put it then: “We might need some guys to get a little creative with how they provide innings. …Having someone on the staff that … has lived those experiences as successfully as any … has a lot of appeal” (per Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times).
Tampa Bay has certainly needed that creativity this year. The club has moved several pitchers between the bullpen and rotation, including Griffin Jax, Ian Seymour, and Steven Matz, along with Mason Englert, Jesse Scholtens, and Joe Boyle.
Martinez, though, has been the exception. He has stayed in the rotation, piling up 171 1/3 innings across 29 starts.
The results have been excellent. Martinez owns a 2.94 ERA, which ranks sixth among qualified AL pitchers, and his 3.5% walk rate is the best in baseball.
The deeper metrics are less flattering, with a 4.02 xERA and 4.64 SIERA, but the right-hander has repeatedly done the same thing: keep runners off base, keep runs off the board, and give the Rays length. He has worked into the fifth inning and allowed three or fewer runs in 25 of his 29 starts.
Only Cam Schlittler and Parker Messick have done that more often.
That consistency has left Tampa Bay with no real reason to move him. So when he makes this start, it will also complete something even stranger: the first season of his MLB or MiLB career without a single relief appearance.
The company Martinez is joining is tiny, and it tells you plenty about how unusual this is. More than 1,700 major league pitchers have made at least 30 starts in a season, but only 12 did it for the first time at age 35 or older.
The latest was Tomoyuki Sugano in 2025. Before him, the most recent non-established NPB star on that list was R.A.
Dickey in 2011. Before Dickey came Steve Sparks in 2001, and before Sparks, Willie Ramsdell in 1951.
The names that follow in that group stretch back through wartime baseball and into the early 20th century: Dick Barrett, Ed Heusser, Spud Chandler, Ray Starr, Heinie Meine, Stoney McGlynn, Walt Dickson, and George McConnell.
Martinez’s résumé going into this season was already bigger than most of theirs was before their first 30-start year. He had appeared in 280 MLB games, made 129 starts, thrown 940 innings, and struck out 670 batters.
He entered 2026 with a career that was already plenty meaningful. Now it has another peak.
This has become the season where everything seems to be lining up. Martinez made his first All-Star team this summer, and he has a real chance to pick up his first down-ballot Cy Young votes this fall.
He has been the most unexpectedly productive player on one of the league’s most unexpected teams. He leads the Rays in innings, has a sub-3.00 ERA, and has helped fuel a 22-7 record when he takes the ball.
That success should earn him his first playoff start next month.
Thirty starts may not be the headline number in a career full of detours, but it fits the story perfectly. For Nick Martinez, it’s a marker of just how far an unusual journey has carried him.
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