{"id":663440,"date":"2026-04-04T21:24:17","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T21:24:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/663440\/"},"modified":"2026-04-04T21:24:17","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T21:24:17","slug":"cubs-to-promote-riley-martin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/663440\/","title":{"rendered":"Cubs To Promote Riley Martin"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Cubs will promote left-hander Riley Martin<\/a> from Triple-A Iowa to their active roster before today\u2019s game with the Guardians, according to Bleacher Nation\u2019s Jacob Zanolla<\/a>.\u00a0 Martin is likely the corresponding move for Cade Horton<\/a>\u2018s forthcoming placement<\/a> on the 15-day injured list, and no other transaction is needed since Martin is already on Chicago\u2019s 40-man roster.<\/p>\n

The 28-year-old Martin will be making his Major League debut whenever he is first used in a game.\u00a0 The southpaw was a sixth-round pick for the Cubs in the 2021 draft, and he has pitched at the Triple-A level in each of the last four seasons.\u00a0 Working almost exclusively as a reliever, Martin has a 3.88 ERA and an impressive 30.67% strikeout rate over 139 1\/3 innings in Iowa, but with an inflated 15.57% walk rate.\u00a0 Left-handed Triple-A batters contributed most of that damage, as Martin had significant reverse splits in both 2024 and 2025.<\/p>\n

Baseball America ranked Martin 20th on its list of the top 30 Cubs prospects, while MLB Pipeline has the southpaw 28th on their top-30 ranking.\u00a0 He relies almost entirely on a plus curveball that, as per Pipeline\u2019s scouting report, \u201ccan be devastating at times and also lose some shape and miss the zone by wide margins at others.\u201d\u00a0 In general, Pipeline\u2019s evaluation feels Martin \u201ctrades control for deception\u201d in deploying an upright delivery to maximize the break on his pitches.<\/p>\n

Chicago placed Martin on the 40-man roster last November in advance of the Rule 5 Draft, and the lefty will now take the next step into the big leagues for the first time.\u00a0 Martin has often worked multiple innings out of the pen, giving the Cubs some extra length as they figure out how to manage Horton\u2019s absence.\u00a0 Swingman Colin Rea<\/a> could be the top candidate for rotation work, Ben Brown<\/a> is another candidate already on the active roster, or the Cubs might use both pitchers and other arms for a bullpen game or two until Rea is fully stretched out for a starting role.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Cubs will promote left-hander Riley Martin from Triple-A Iowa to their active roster before today\u2019s game with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":663441,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2290],"tags":[5,735,27260],"class_list":{"0":"post-663440","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-baseball","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-cade-horton","10":"tag-riley-martin"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116348549134998564","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=663440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663440\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/663441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=663440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=663440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=663440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}