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Padres manager Bob Melvin confirmed prior to Saturday's 5-3 win over the Diamondbacks that Martinez will shift to the bullpen following Joe Musgrove's (toe/shoulder) return from the 15-day injured list, Bill Center of MLB.com reports. "We'll have Nick ready in the bullpen pretty quick, too. The very earliest is [Sunday]," Melvin said.
Even though Martinez lowered his ERA and WHIP to 4.01 and 1.22, respectively, after tossing seven scoreless frames and allowing just five baserunners in a win over Atlanta on Wednesday, the return of Musgrove means that the Friars won't have room in the rotation for Martinez or Ryan Weathers, who had also excelled through his first three starts of the campaign. While it's possible the Padres expand their rotation back to six men at some point and look to Martinez to fill the opening, the team will get by with a five-man setup for now with two off days on tap during the upcoming week. Martinez brought some value in a relief role in 2022 -- he accrued a 2.67 ERA, 1.04 WHIP and 15.6 K-BB% while notching eight saves in 54 innings -- but most of those save chances came when the Padres' bullpen situation was more fluid and/or while Josh Hader battled command issues. Hader has righted the ship thus far in 2023 and has re-emerged as one of the game's elite closers, so Martinez doesn't look like he'll offer much more than ratio stabilization in his impending return to the bullpen.
