Kevin Cash Is Starting Nick Martinez in World Series Game 1 Instead of Drew Rasmussen. It Is the Right Call.
The Tampa Bay Rays are handing Game 1 of the World Series to a 36-year-old who spent three seasons pitching in Japan, and they are holding back the man who threw eight innings of one-hit ball to open the playoffs. Kevin Cash announced it Thursday. He is right.
Game 1 is Friday at 8 p.m. ET at American Family Field in Milwaukee on FOX. The Brewers have home field because they won 103 games to Tampa Bay’s 98.
Cash Said Why, and It Holds Up
“We prioritized Drew getting an extra day,” Cash said of Drew Rasmussen. “He’s had a pretty thick workload here. We’ve relied on him heavily.”
That is not a dodge. Rasmussen threw 172 innings in the regular season, by a wide margin the heaviest year of a career that includes two Tommy John surgeries and an internal brace procedure on the same elbow. He has added 21 October innings across three starts with a 1.29 ERA and 23 strikeouts. He is not hurt. He is used up, and now he gets Game 2 with an extra day on it.
Winning the ALCS in six games instead of seven bought Cash this flexibility. Freddy Peralta, the deadline pickup who won ALCS MVP against Cleveland, gets Game 3 at Tropicana Field, where he has a 1.45 ERA in seven starts since the trade. That also keeps Peralta out of Milwaukee, where he spent the first eight seasons of his career.
Martinez Earned It on the Road
Martinez went 15-6 with a 3.10 ERA over 180 innings and a 1.09 WHIP, led the Rays in innings, and made his first All-Star team at 35 in a career that started in 2014. Tampa Bay went 24-9 in his starts including the playoffs.
He is also better away from home, with a road ERA around 2.4 against 3.90 at the Trop, and both of his postseason starts have come on the road. He gave the Rays 3 2/3 innings at Yankee Stadium in the ALDS clincher, then went 5 1/3 and allowed one run on two hits in ALCS Game 4 in Cleveland with Tampa Bay trailing the series 2-1.
Cash’s version of the argument was simpler. “When Nick pitches, we win.”
The Spring Nobody Saw This Coming In
Martinez signed a one-year, $13 million contract with Tampa Bay in February after going 11-14 with a 4.45 ERA for Cincinnati. Before that he was a Texas Ranger from 2014 through 2017, then left for Japan, where he pitched for the Nippon-Ham Fighters and then put up a 1.60 ERA with 138 strikeouts for the SoftBank Hawks in 2021.
“I’m sure you guys can remember my Spring Training wasn’t a great one,” he said Thursday. “Now we’re here.”
He is the third Game 1 starter in Rays history, after Scott Kazmir in 2008 and Tyler Glasnow in 2020.
Milwaukee Counters With the Cy Young Favorite
Jacob Misiorowski is 24 and led the majors with a 1.80 ERA, and his 252 strikeouts were the most in baseball. He also has not pitched since October 11, which puts nearly two weeks of rest between him and the biggest start of his life.
Neither of these franchises has ever won a World Series. The Rays lost in 2008 and 2020, the Brewers lost in 1982 when they were still an American League team, and somebody collects a first title inside the next ten days.
Cash is managing like a man who understands the math of that. His best pitcher has to survive two starts to get there, and the way to make sure of it was to give him a day he did not have to earn.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
