Dave Martinez

Dave Martinez is a former MLB outfielder and current manager who spent parts of four seasons with the Chicago Cubs as a player and three years as bench coach.

Martinez was originally a 40th-round draft pick of the Texas Rangers, though after returning to school, the Cubs snagged him in the third round of the 1983 MLB January Draft-Secondary Phase from Valencia Community College. After spending a few years honing his game in the minor leagues, Martinez finally got the call to the big leagues in 1986 as a replacement for the injured Bob Dernier.

Outside of a 90-game stretch in 1988 where he was worth 2.5 WAR, Martinez mostly struggled in his first go-round with the Cubs, eventually getting traded at 23 years old to the Montreal Expos for Mitch Webster. He would go on to spend plenty of time with the Expos, Cincinnati Reds, San Francisco Giants, and Chicago White Sox before becoming the first ever player traded by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays organization in 2000 (in exchange for Cubs southpaw reliever Mark Guthrie). Martinez again struggled in the Windy City, slashing just .185/.214/.241 in 18 games. Across all four of his seasons on the North Side (288 games), the outfielder was worth just 0.7 WAR and posted an OPS of .683. That second tenure did not last long, as later in that same season, the Cubs flipped Martinez to the Texas Rangers in a three-team trade that sent Chuck Smith from the Florida Marlins to the Rangers and Brant Brown from the Marlins to the Cubs.

Then, for the third time(!) in the 2000 season, Martinez was traded, this time from the Rangers to the Blue Jays. By playing for four big league teams in the same calendar year, Martinez tied the MLB record, which is also held by Frank Huelsman (1904), Willis Hudlin (1940), Paul Lehner (1951), Wes Covington (1961), Mike Kilkenny (1972), Dave Kingman (1977), Dan Miceli (2003), and José Bautista (2004). Martinez played for the Atlanta Braves in 2001 before an injury ended his playing career.

Of course, Martinez's legacy with the Cubs wasn't strictly limited to his on-the-field play. A longtime disciple of Joe Maddon, Martinez was the Rays' bench coach from 2008-14 before defecting alongside Maddon to Chicago. He was the team's bench coach from 2015-17, arguably the best three-year stretch in franchise history. Of course, the Cubs won it all in 2016, and Martinez was a beloved figure in the dugout. His departure for the Washington Nationals' top job prior to 2018 pre-dated Maddon's by two years, but I'll always remember how bittersweet it was to finally watch the Cubs become the envy of other teams as their top brass was poached. With the benefit of hindsight, it's easy to say Martinez's departure was the beginning of the end for that brilliant, championship-winning core.

I'd be remiss not to note that Martinez won it all as the Nationals' manager in 2019, though his tenure has been rocky since as the club has undergone a systematic overhaul. Also, Martinez's replacement on the Cubs, Brandon Hyde, was similarly hired as a manger (of the Baltimore Orioles) one year later. Clearly, those Cubs teams had the coaching prowess to match the player talent.