Texas reunites with reliever Chris Martin on 1-year deal

ARLINGTON -- The Rangers have made a number of moves to rebuild their bullpen this offseason, but one major need remained: an experienced high-leverage arm or two.

Well, they got one.

On Monday night, the Rangers announced they signed veteran reliever and Arlington native Chris Martin to a one-year deal, making him the sixth bullpen addition this winter. To make room for Martin on the 40-man roster, right-handed pitcher Matt Festa was designated for assignment.

This will be Martin’s second stint with the Rangers, as he posted a 3.84 ERA with 80 strikeouts in 84 games with the club from 2018-19.

“There's a lot of new faces in the players, but behind the scenes in the front office and the training staff, it’s a lot of the same people,” Martin said. “That gives you some comfortability. I’m just looking forward to pitching inside the new stadium and not worrying about the weather as much. I've come into the new stadium and pitched in it. I've always liked pitching in the dome.”

Most recently, Martin had a 3.45 ERA in 45 relief appearances for the Red Sox in 2024. He had a career year in ’23 in Boston, when he had a 1.05 ERA in 51 1/3 innings, while finishing 12th in American League Cy Young Award voting.

Across his career, Martin has a 3.38 ERA, 14 saves and 357 strikeouts in 369 relief appearances with the Rockies (2014), Yankees (’15), Rangers (’18-19), Braves (’19-21), Cubs (’22), Dodgers (’22) and Red Sox (’23-24).

“First of all, [we have a] familiarity with the person and the competitor that he is,” said general manager Ross Fenstermaker. “But in terms of the on-field performance, I think he’s been one of the best, or better, relievers over the last three years in terms of performance, consistency. He's an elite strike thrower. He's pitched late in games and in leverage, he's finished games. He's pitched a variety of roles, and he's as consistent and reliable as any reliever that we thought was available in the free agent market. We were excited to have to add him to the group.”

He has never been a full-time closer, but Martin definitely provides Texas with a high-leverage option out of the bullpen. Fenstermaker deferred to manager Bruce Bochy on the potential closer competition, while noting that Martin will be in the thick of it entering camp.

“I've obviously never been a set closer or been given that role,” Martin said. “I feel like I've always pitched behind some pretty good relievers. Obviously, I think I can do it. Obviously, it's not really something that bothers me. I think it's basically the same as doing the sixth, seventh or eighth. Your goal is to go in there and get outs without runs on the board. That would be my mindset. But I just want to be able to do whatever role Bochy wants me in to help the team win. That's what I'm looking forward to doing.”

Beyond Martin, Texas has added five other relievers to the big league roster this offseason: Hoby Milner, Luis Curvelo, Robert Garcia, Jacob Webb and Shawn Armstrong.

The Rangers have lost four relievers -- righties Kirby Yates (61 2/3 innings), David Robertson (72 innings) and José Leclerc (66 2/3 innings) and lefty Andrew Chafin (19 1/3 innings) -- as well as swingman righty José Ureña (109 innings) to free agency this winter.

So far, they have done a solid job of adding back the missing innings, though Yates’ 1.17 ERA and 33 saves in 34 opportunities will be hard to replace.

“We’re just looking to make our bullpen better,” general manager Chris Young said after Christmas. “We are looking to improve our bullpen in a number of ways: middle relief, leverage, lefties, righties. We have holes, and we're going to continue to address those holes. We had a number of great conversations with agents and with teams [at the Winter Meetings]. We will continue to find the right pieces.”

Additionally, the Rangers traded right-handed pitcher Owen White to the Reds in exchange for cash considerations earlier in the day. The former MLB Pipeline Top 100 prospect was designated for assignment by Texas when the club signed Milner on Dec. 20.

The 40-man roster remains full. Fenstermaker said the club is not actively pursuing more starting pitching outside of Japanese phenom Roki Sasaki and that there’s not a “specific need” for a closer following the other bullpen additions.

He added that the front office would entertain the opportunity to add an experienced closer, but the goal is to just continue adding to the roster to improve in 2025.

“I think you can never have enough pitching, that's been stated many times before, but I think we feel like we've done the bulk of our lifting at this point,” Fenstermaker said. “But we're always going to look for ways in which we can upgrade the club further. We're going to continue to be open minded and creative, but we feel like we've done a lot of heavy lifting so far, and we put this team in a good spot and built all the ‘pen quite well. We're looking forward to seeing these guys get into 2025.”