Bright lights, no city: West Texas lifestyle prepared Sox pitcher Martin for big-league success

Among the touted prospects, high draft picks and international sensations inside the White Sox clubhouse, perhaps the greatest success story is a former 14th-round pick three years removed from Tommy John surgery.

Right-hander Davis Martin has become exactly what the Sox need — a steady, consistent leader of the pitching staff. With a 1.95 ERA through six starts, he's on track to make his first all-star appearance.

The path to stardom featured a unique combination of West Texas cross-training — life as a ranch hand, along with big-time high school football.

Martin played middle linebacker in high school for the San Angelo Central Bobcats. The final regular-season game of his senior year was at Odessa Permian, the school made famous by “Friday Night Lights” — book, movie and TV show. The Bobcats won 39-21.

“For the district title, I think we had 21,000 people there,” Martin said. “Our high school stadium seated 17,500. The visiting teams (fans) would travel, so you'd have both sides pretty well packed. We'd have standing room only at some of our games. So, yeah, playing in front of 20,000 people as a 16-, 17-, 18-year-old is quite the experience.”

During his senior year, Central finished 12-2 and advanced to the third round of the playoffs.

“We'd get to a (Dallas-Fort Worth) school and usually get a little out-D1 committed at some point in the playoffs,” Martin said. “I think baseball was always going to be my favorite sport, but Friday Night Lights in West Texas is always fun.”

Martin grew up on the outskirts of San Angelo, on a rugged expanse of land called Eagle Ranch. He described it as more of a hunting ranch. The family keeps some cattle and sheep, but it's not a big operation.

“My granddad bought it in 2003,” Martin said. “He was born and raised in Philadelphia, lived in Pennsylvania his whole life. My mom was his only child, so when she married my dad and moved to Texas, they were like, 'No reason to stay here.'

“So they did what any Pennsylvanian would do. He's like, 'I'm gonna buy a 250-acre ranch out in West Texas.'”

That led to a different sort of lifestyle growing up. Martin said the ranch didn't get Wi-Fi until two years ago. Much of his childhood was spent checking and repairing the barbed-wire fence that surrounded the property.

“Now that I'm older and I can say no to my dad, my favorite part of visiting the ranch is just relaxing,” Martin joked. “It's so quiet out there. You go outside and hear nothing, see nothing. The occasional plane will fly over, but the closest city is about 25 minutes away and it's a town of 450 people.”

As far as big cities go, Martin lived roughly three hours from San Antonio, four hours from Dallas. He went to a couple Texas Rangers games growing up when his travel baseball team played tournaments in the Metroplex. His commute to college at Texas Tech was nearly three hours. Essentially, there wasn't much reason to leave the ranch.

“We only had one TV, the family TV in the living room,” Martin said. “If a football game was on, we're all watching it together. Movie's on, we're all watching it together. So it was just a really cool place for family to get together.”

During the offseason, Martin invited some of his pitching teammates out to the ranch, so Sean Burke, Jonathan Cannon, Shane Smith and Drew Thorpe got a chance to experience the tight-knit, hard-working West Texas life. Burke and Smith grew up in Massachusetts, so it was a nice contrast.

Last year was Martin's first full season in the majors. He debuted in '22, then missed parts of '23 and '24 due to the elbow surgery. There's no obvious answer to how he dropped his ERA from last year's 4.10 to 1.95.

Martin's walk rate (1.9 per 9 innings) is among the best in the majors. He uses six types of pitches at least 10% of the time each. While hitters have had some success against Martin's four-seam and cutter, he's been able to get swing and miss on the sweeper and curve.

“Just throwing a ton of strikes, getting a ton of soft contact early in counts,” Sox manager Will Venable said. “From last year he's taken a step forward and just pounding the zone.”