Cuban Raidel Martinez increases personal record at NPB

HAVANA, Cuba, Sep 23 (ACN) Cuban pitcher Raidel Martinez kept increasing his personal record at the Japan Professional Baseball League by scoring on Sunday his 42nd save of the campaign.

For the second day in a row the fast pitcher stepped on the mound, this time at the Vantelin Dome in Nagoya in front of more than 36,000 fans, to preserve the lead of his Chunichi Dragons, winners with a final score of 2-1 over the Hiroshima Carp.

Martinez retired the three batters he faced, one of them with a strikeout, to lower his ERA to 1.12, the result of seven runs scored in 56 innings of work.

With that save, he reaffirmed his position as leader in that department in both leagues and improved his record for a season by three, set in 2022 when he won the title of maximum accumulator.

The mark being left by the 27-year-old pitcher in Japan is such that he has participated in 75 % of the victories of his team, located in the fifth and penultimate place of the Central League.

However his 42 games saved are still far from the absolute record for that baseball, held by US Dennis Sarfate, signed in 2017 in the uniform of the SoftBank Falcons with a total of 54.