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A one-time Yankee and former World Series champion is hanging up his spikes.
Chris Martin, a right-handed reliever who pitched parts of 11 seasons in MLB, has retired at age 40, FanSided reported Wednesday.
Injuries derailed Martin’s big-league dream early in his career, to the point that he left baseball.
He had jobs unloading trucks for UPS, moving refrigerators for Lowe’s and stocking washers and dryers at a Texas appliance store, per Milb.com.
He returned to independent ball in 2010 and parlayed that into a minor-league deal with the Red Sox.
He reached the big leagues for the first time with the Rockies in 2014 and then spent 2015 with the Yankees, pitching to a 5.66 ERA in 24 appearances while splitting time with Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.
Martin then pitched in Japan for the Nippon-Ham Fighters for two years, where he learned how to throw a splitter from none other than Shohei Ohtani.
He returned to MLB with the Rangers in 2018 and had varying degrees of success over the ensuing eight seasons.
The Braves acquired Martin at the 2019 trade deadline, and he ended up being a key piece of their bullpen during their 2021 World Series championship run.
During that postseason, Martin allowed one run in 4 ⅓ innings with three strikeouts across five appearances, including Games 4 and 5 of the World Series against the Astros.
After splitting 2022 with the Cubs and Dodgers, his career peaked with the Red Sox in 2023, when he recorded a 1.05 ERA in 51 ⅓ innings across 55 appearances.
His performance earned him a Cy Young vote that put him 12th in the voting.
Martin finishes his career with a 3.53 ERA and 409 strikeouts in 434 regular-season appearances.
