Davis Martin looks to return to rotation, and first-half form, for home stretch of White Sox’ playoff push
MINNEAPOLIS — White Sox starter Davis Martin was relegated to watching his teammates from afar while nursing a blister on the middle finger that has sidelined him for two weeks.
Suffice to say he’s happy to be watching from the dugout this weekend in Minneapolis, and he’ll be thrilled to be back on the mound next week in Houston.
“It’s huge,” Martin said after rejoining the team Friday following a quick, sharp Triple-A rehab assignment. “I told my wife after just one day in Charlotte, I was just like, ‘I miss my guys. I’m seeing [Tristan Peters] hit his fifth home run.’ I had, like, the super FOMO as I was sitting in my hotel room by myself in Charlotte. I miss my guys, I miss my team, I miss all that. I just want to be back.”
With a pitching staff gasping toward the finish line in the heat of a pennant race, the Sox are missing Martin just as much — especially the version of Martin they got over the first few months of the season, when their longest-tenured player’s breakout put him in All-Star consideration.
But it’s been a slog since late June for Martin, whose ERA ballooned to 4.32 before the blister did on his throwing hand.
At this stage, the Sox will take just about anything they can get from Martin, a week removed from their last game with anyone in the rotation clearing five innings and flagging reliability in starters not named Sean Burke or Anthony Kay.
The need was made all the more apparent early in the Sox’ series opener at Target Field, where the Twins roughed up trade-deadline acquisition Luis Castillo for four runs on seven hits over the first three innings. Sox hitters have done their part to pick up the slack.
Martin evoked his first-half form with five innings of scoreless, one-hit ball on Thursday for the Knights, walking one and fanning five while throwing 40 of his 59 pitches for strikes.
The 29-year-old right-hander often looked unhittable over the first two-plus months of the season, but has labored to a 6.52 ERA over his last 15 starts. His IL stint was as valuable for physical recovery as it was mental.
“It was a good time to mentally reset,” he said. “Good time to really just focus in on bullpens, be able to actually get stuff out of bullpens because you are fresher than just your normal Day Two ‘pen after throwing 100 pitches so you’re able to work on stuff, you’re able to really dive into a lot of these things, and I think we did a really good job of refining all that stuff, and I think mentally, we’re in a really good spot.”
With Martin lined up to start Tuesday but not yet officially penciled in, manager Will Venable called it “really important to get him back and healthy and [to] kind of stabilize our rotation.”
“He’s been one of our guys in the middle of everything all year,” Venable said. “Obviously, we know that when he’s right, what he’s capable of doing, he’s been as valuable as any player. So to have him back, and get that type of player back, that guy that’s a leader in our clubhouse in every way possible — he makes an impact on our club.”
The timing is not lost on Venable, whose squad has four more key division series over the final month of the season.
“They’re going to decide it all,” the second-year manager said. “It’s what it’s all about, being able to take care of your own division. And in our case, every one of these clubs in our division are really good.”
And Martin wouldn’t miss it for the world.
“It’s everything that we worked for,” he said. “We had a few team meetings last year basically saying, ‘Hey, if you don’t believe that we can do this, like, you don’t need to be in this room.’ And a lot of guys that were on that team are still here and still ready to roll and still pushing… Now it’s just time to finish. It’s time to empty the tank and give it everything we got.”