The right-hander from Pinar del Río recorded his 38th save of the season on Thursday, retiring all three batters he faced in order to secure the Yomiuri Giants’ 5-3 victory over the Chunichi Dragons at the Tokyo Dome.
With the performance, Raidel lowered his ERA to 1.34 and reached 250 career saves in NPB, earning him membership in the prestigious Meikyukai, a club reserved for players who have accumulated 2,000 hits, 200 wins, or 250 saves during their careers. Martínez also becomes just the second foreign player to achieve this honor, joining Venezuelan Alex Ramírez.
He also becomes the only Latino to save 250 games in the land of the rising sun and the All-time saves leader for that ethnicity. With his next save he will move to third on the All-time saves list in the NPB. The only other foreigner to save more than 200 games in the Nippon League is Dennis Sarfate with the SoftBank Hawks.
Martinez has saved more than 30 games over the last five seasons and with two more saves he will become the only Latino in NPB history with three straight 40 save seasons. In 413⅓ innings the right-hander sports a nifty 1.59 earned run average.
The NPB all-time career saves leaderboard:
1. Hitoki Iwase — 407
2. Shingo Takatsu — 286
3. Kazuhiro Sasaki — 252
4. Yoshihisa Hirano — 250
4.Naoya Masuda — 250
4. Raidel Martínez — 250
7. Yasuaki Yamasaki — 246
8. Kyuji Fujikawa — 243
9. Yuki Matsui — 236
10. Dennis Sarfate — 234
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