CINCINNATI — Nick Martinez grew into a favorite among teammates and fans in his two seasons with the Padres for his selflessness and clutch performances.
He has been largely the same guy with the Reds.
Martinez instigated a move to the bullpen a couple weeks back because he was seeking to get right mechanically after a couple poor outings.
He clearly fixed what was plaguing him, and he went up against an opponent ripe for domination in his first turn back in the Reds rotation.
Martinez finished Friday night disappointed only in that he fell three outs shy of his first career no-hitter while pitching against his former team.
While Martinez hung his head, the Padres celebrated as Elias Díaz reached second base following his double off the wall in center field in the ninth inning.
They would also get to celebrate a runner crossing the plate, as Taylor Rogers, another former Padres pitcher, walked in a run before finishing off an 8-1 Reds victory.
“The demons came in pretty early there,” Martinez said. “Like the fourth. I saw no hits, and I was like, ‘Ah, keep going. Talk to yourself about one pitch at a time and executing whatever (catcher Tyler Stephenson) calls.”
Martinez coming so close to what would have been the 327th no-hitter in MLB history relegated Spencer Steer’s three-homer night to a sub-headline.
It also somewhat took Padres starter Dylan Cease off the hook, as troubling as his recurring struggles are for the Padres.
The right-hander’s laboriously uneven season continued with a 93-pitch, four-inning, four-run outing against the Reds.
Yuki Matsui allowed all of the Reds’ other runs in the fifth inning.
The Padres had been hitting better over the past few weeks but have slunk back into offensive inertia.
They have scored one run over the past two games, though the first of those ended in a 1-0 victory over the Nationals.
They are batting .227 over their past 39 games and have been held to one or zero runs in 11 of those games. Their average of 3.6 runs in those 39 games (since May 16) is sixth-lowest in the major leagues.
This night was about Martinez, who through eight innings was separated from a perfect game only by a two-out walk to Jackson Merrill in the first inning.
Martinez began the ninth by walking Trenton Brooks before Díaz launched an 0-1 changeup too far for left fielder Ryan Vilade to run down in the gap.
“It’s really important — more for the team than for me,” Díaz said. “Because when someone has a no-hitter, I don’t know to explain, but it’s not good.”
Martinez played two seasons with the Padres before opting out of his contract following the 2023 season. He signed a two-year deal with the Reds. He opted out of that deal after last year but accepted the qualifying offer the Reds gave him, which pays him $21.05 million this season.
He went into Friday’s start with a 4.40 ERA in 17 games, which included his three perfect innings in relief appearances on Saturday and Monday.
He did not have much to sweat about aside from it being a Midwestern summer evening on Friday against the Padres, for whom he had a 3.45 ERA while switching back and forth between starting and relieving in 2022 and ‘23.
“(Had) some close calls when we were out there,” he said.
Maybe it felt like that. But it didn’t look like it.
Reds outfielders made two lunging catches, including one by Will Benson in right field in the eighth inning on a ball Merrill hit down the line at 99 mph.
Martinez also thought a drive by Machado to center field that died on the track would be gone. But it was just 99 mph off the bat, and Machado let Martinez know with a shake of the head and a mouthed “No” on his way back to the dugout that he never thought it was leaving the yard.
Gavin Sheets’ line drive to right field in the fifth inning, with a 65% hit probability, was the only ball the Padres put in play in the first eighth innings that had better than a 35% chance of being a hit.
No Padres batter saw more than six pitches from Martinez until Sheets flied out on the eighth pitch of his at-bat in the eighth.
That pushed Martinez to 98 pitches. Xander Bogaerts grounded out on the second pitch he saw before Jake Cronenworth struck out.
Martinez hopped off the mound, screaming and pumping his fists low in front of his waist in a way familiar to the Padres after the eighth.
He was at 105 pitches, seven off his career high. But there was no way he wasn’t going to be sent back out to try to finish off his first no-hitter.
Afterward, he was still the same smiling Martinez the Padres grew so fond of. And he acknowledged the work of Stephenson, who helped navigate him through the night facing hitters familiar with him.
The Padres scored 10 runs in 9⅔ innings in two games against Martinez last season.
“Yeah, they know me pretty well,” Martinez said. “Hats off to Stevo.”
Originally Published: June 27, 2025 at 7:01 PM PDT