Yunior Marte: enigma

Interesting arms are always fun to see the Phillies grab. There seems to be a type that they have: throws hard, has an interesting secondary pitch and has at least some idea of where the strike zone is. Caleb Cotham and friends have been pretty good at developing at least some pitchers to populate the bottom of the roster, enough that they can cycle out pitchers to Lehigh Valley and back without missing much of a beat.

Yunior Marte was one of those guys. Good, lively fastball, good enough slider, but he was missing that third part that is essential to being a major league pitcher. The strike zone was merely a suggestion to him. Now, he’s off the 40-man roster and likely looking at spending either all of 2025 in Lehigh or with a new organization.

2024 season: 23 G, 26 IP, 22 R (20 ER), 11.8 BB%, 18.1 K%, 6.92 ERA (5.63 FIP), -0.2 fWAR

What went right

2023 saw the Phillies grab Marte from the Giants in a minor deal and he showed flashes of decent stuff. He still showed those same flashes at times when he was on the mound, though he was hurt for much of the year. Once he returned, he still looked like one of those guys that a team uses when they’re way behind or way ahead to give their top arms some rest. Through August, he even had some halfway decent numbers even though he was walking a ton of hitters.

What went wrong

Then came his appearance in Arizona.

A seven run outing in ²⁄₃ of inning that effectively ended a game in which the team had a chance meant they had seen enough. He was given one more cursory look after that, but he was summarily discarded to the minor leagues for the remainder of the season.

The future with the Phillies

Marte has been outrighted off of the team’s 40-man roster, so he isn’t in the their immediate plans to help at the big league level. There might come a time this season where the team feels like he can get another shot at pitching in Philadelphia, but if he does, something has gone horribly wrong.