Giants' parade of rookies continues, with Yunior Marte stepping up in win over Arizona

Giants pitcher Yunior Marte, making his major league debut, held the Diamondbacks to one run in 4⅔ innings Saturday night at Oracle Park.  (Jeff Chiu/Associated Press)

It was rookie debut day at Oracle Park and Yunior Marte, who started the second game of the San Francisco Giants ' doubleheader against Arizona, made quite an impression.

Lefty Seth Lonsway made his first big-league appearance in Game 1, a Giants loss, but it was Marte, a 6-foot-6, 230-pound right-hander, who put himself firmly on the radar for next year and maybe even this. Marte worked 4⅔ innings in San Francisco's 7-2 win, going through the Diamondbacks lineup twice and allowing three hits and two walks, striking out three and getting a double-play ball after walking Lars Nootbaar to open the game.

Marte, 23, was picked up at last year's trade deadline when the Giants sent Mike Yastrzemski to the Royals. Marte is ranked the Giants' No. 24 prospect by MLB Pipeline and he was pitching at Double-A Richmond, where he had a 3.92 ERA in 13 starts to go along with his 6-1 record and 3.74 ERA in nine games with Class-A Eugene.

It's unusual for a player to jump straight from Double-A to the big leagues, but for a Giants team that has needed a steady infusion of pitchers and wants to avoid adding top prospects to the 40-man roster unless they must be protected from the Rule 5 draft this winter, Marte was a great fit - he would have been Rule 5 eligible elsewise.

He used his mid-90s fastball as his primary weapon the first time through the order, his slider the second time around, and he threw plenty of strikes, exactly what the Giants crave, 48 out of his 76 pitches.

Lonsway, sent down to make room for Marte between games, allowed two runs in his two innings in the first game and Braxton Roxby worked a 1-2-3 inning in his big-league debut Friday night. The Giants have had 14 players in all make their debuts this season, second most in the majors. San Francisco's record is 16 in 2008.

In all, the team has used an astonishing 22 rookies over the course of the year, 11 of them on the current active roster although Matt "Tugboat" Wilkinson was the 27th man for the doubleheader. He's likely to return when rosters expand by two Tuesday. Five rookies are on the injured list.

One of those rookies, Jonah Cox, also jumped straight from Richmond to San Francisco this year. He helped Marte to an early lead, drawing a first-inning walk in the leadoff spot against lefty Mitch Bratt. Cox stole second and, with one out, stole third standing up, then scored on rookie Bryce Eldridge's single. Cox is now 8-for-9 on stolen-base attempts, and combined with his minor-league steals, he has 42 overall.

The team, dead last in walks in the first half, has fared somewhat better in that category in the second half. In the first half, the Giants drew 2.5 walks per game; since, 3.12.

In their three-run fifth, the Giants walked three times and two scored, shades of what their opponents have done to them much of the season. In the seventh, Drew Gilbert walked and came around to score after hits by Eldridge and Jung Hoo Lee, then walked again in the eighth and scored on Eldridge's fourth hit of the game, an infield single.

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