Japanese Baseball Cards: Raidel Martinez

On Thursday of this week, Raidel Martinez of the Yomiuri Giants became the second pitcher this season to reach the 250 career saves mark. Martinez did it in 411 career games, the fastest in NPB history - in contrast, Naoya Masuda, the last guy to reach the milestone, did it in 795 games, the most in history. (In fairness to Masuda, there's only four other guys with more than 250 saves in NPB). The Cuban Martinez has become only the third foreign player to meet the qualifications for the Meikyukai (2000 hits, 200 wins or 250 saves*). The others are Alphonso Soriano and Alex Ramirez although Soriano has never been invited to join as he only had two hits in NPB (where he began his career with the Hiroshima Toyo Carp).

* Stats posted in MLB count as well but the first hits, wins or saves must be in NPB. Ramirez's first hits were in MLB but he had 2000 hits in NPB as well.

Martinez was originally signed by the Chunichi Dragons as a development player (ikusei) in 2017. He was registered to the 70 man roster in early 2018 and made a few appearances with the top team as a starter before shifting to the bullpen. He replaced Hiroshi Suzuki as the team's closer at the end of May of 2019 and notched his first save on June 11. He led the Central League in saves in both 2022 and 2024 before leaving the Dragons as a free agent at the end of the 2024 season. He signed with the Giants and again led the Central League in saves in 2025 (and he's currently leading the league again this season).

Martinez was the first former development player to ever lead the league in saves and is the first one to make the Meikyukai.

He's played for the Cuban National Team in three World Baseball Classics (2017, 2023 and 2026) and two Premier 12s (2019 and 2024). I'm kind of disappointed that he has not yet appeared on a WBC baseball card.

Speaking of his baseball cards, I believe that his earliest card is 2018's Epoch One #190 which commemorates his first career win on May 15th. He also appeared in both BBM's and Epoch's comprehensive team sets that year (#D32 in BBM's set and #33 in Epoch's). His first flagship set appearances for BBM, Epoch, Calbee and Topps were in 2019, 2020, 2022 and 2023 respectively. Here's some of his cards: