With the Philadelphia Phillies looking to bolster their roster with some impactful moves this offseason, one of the areas that they can look to improve in is their bullpen. After all, their relief corps ranked in the bottom third of the league in ERA (4.27), WHIP (1.33) and strikeouts (505), along with blowing 27 saves during the 2025 MLB season.
If Philadelphia wants to significantly improve in those key statistical categories for 2026, they could consider rekindling their relationship with an old friend. Former Phillies reliever Yunior Marte just put together a strong 2025 campaign with the Chunichi Dragons in Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) in Japan.
Yunior Marte’s season in Japan might give Phillies second thoughts
Making a total of 50 relief appearances for the Dragons, despite a 1-6 record, Marte fielded a stellar 2.11 ERA and 1.00 WHIP while allowing just 11 earned runs and two home runs along with 48 strikeouts in 47 innings. Most noticeably, the 30-year-old reliever reduced his walk rate down to just 2.1 batters per nine innings, compared to his troublesome 4.3 batters per nine innings during his time in MLB with the Phillies and San Francisco Giants.
Those impressive numbers without a doubt marked a drastic improvement from his tenure with Philadelphia during the 2023 and 2024 seasons. Despite possessing the elite arsenal to be a shutdown, strikeout flamethrower, Marte somehow struggled during his time with the Phillies.
In total, he posted a forgettable 5.79 ERA and 1.73 WHIP, giving up a whopping 42 earned runs including 11 home runs, along with 32 walks and 61 strikeouts in 65 1/3 innings over 63 career appearances for Philadelphia. His dreadful performance in a game against the Arizona Diamondbacks in August of 2024, in which he gave up seven runs on six hits in just 2/3 of an inning ultimately spelled an end to his tenure with the organization upon the conclusion of the season.
It has been a common occurrence for former major leaguers to head overseas to rediscover success playing in Japan and help resurrect their professional baseball careers. As in the case for Marte, he may have found exactly that after a huge bounce-back season with the Dragons.
With his full potential now unlocked, perhaps the Phillies should really consider second thoughts on the hard-throwing right-hander. Especially with the lack of strikeout ability in the bottom of their current bullpen mix, that reignited weapon of Marte’s could play well for Philadelphia going forward as they aim to build around the main core of Jhoan Duran, Orion Kerkering, Tanner Banks and Matt Strahm.