CHICAGO (AP) — Davis Martin was so good Saturday night that manager Will Venable felt it was a typical performance for the right-hander.
That's the type of season Martin is having.
Martin struck out seven in six sparkling innings, leading the Chicago White Sox to an 8-3 victory over the crosstown Cubs at Rate Field. He allowed five hits and walked none.
“Davis was great. Similar to what we’ve seen in the past,” Venable said. “Really nice job with the slider tonight, protected it with the sinker. Was able to keep them off balance.”
Martin improved to 6-1 with a 1.61 ERA. He has 59 strikeouts and 10 walks in 56 innings.
The 29-year-old Martin has yielded one run in fewer in each of his last six outings. He is the first White Sox pitcher to six wins in his first nine starts of a season since Lance Lynn in 2021.
Martin said he enjoyed the charged atmosphere in his first career appearance against Cubs.
“Knew it was going to be a challenge, and so it was a lot of fun just going out there and competing,” he said.
Martin retired his first nine batters. He got some help in the third when center fielder Tristan Peters made a diving catch on Matt Shaw's sinking liner for the first out of the inning.
The Cubs got their first baserunner in the fourth when Nico Hoerner hit a grounder up the middle for a leadoff single. Facing runners on the corners, Martin struck out Ian Happ looking and got Seiya Suzuki to bounce into an inning-ending fielder's choice.
Martin surrendered a leadoff homer to Miguel Amaya in the sixth. The Cubs put runners on second and third with one out, but Martin escaped the jam by striking out Happ and Suzuki.
Looking at his rising pitch count and the situation in the game, Martin knew Happ and Suzuki were his last two batters.
“Emptying the tank, trying to execute pitches at a high level,” Martin said. “There's no more just trying to force contact so you can go deeper into the game. You're looking for a swing and miss. You're trying to get out of that inning.”
Martin is the team's longest tenured player. He was selected in the 14th round of the 2018 amateur draft out of Texas Tech University. He made his big league debut with the White Sox in 2022.
He had some promising moments last year, going 7-10 with a 4.10 ERA in 25 starts and one relief appearance.
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Chicago White Sox starter Davis Martin delivers a pitch during the first inning of a baseball game against the Chicago Cubs in Chicago, Saturday, May 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Paul Beaty)
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — U.S. Rep. Julia Letlow advanced to a runoff in Louisiana’s Republican Senate primary Saturday, capitalizing on the power of President Donald Trump’s endorsement in another attempt to purge his party of people he views as disloyal. State Treasurer John Fleming came in second to join her in the next round of voting.
Trump supported Letlow over incumbent Sen. Bill Cassidy, one of the few Republican senators who voted to convict him during his second impeachment trial over the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Cassidy, a doctor, has also clashed with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over vaccine policy, though he provided crucial support to help Kennedy get confirmed.
“I want to say thank you to a very special man who you all know, the best president this country has ever had, President Donald Trump,” Letlow told supporters in the evening, flanked by her two young children. “There is no greater endorsement than the endorsement of President Trump. We’ll always be singing that from the mountaintops.”
Invoking Cassidy's impeachment vote, Letlow said: “Louisiana was not pleased with that vote. They took that as a sign that he had turned his back on the Louisiana voters.”
Trump, who has been trying to dislodge Cassidy, unloaded on him the morning of the election, calling him “a disloyal disaster” and “a terrible guy” on social media. In the evening he followed up with: “Congratulations to Congresswoman Julia Letlow on a fantastic race, beating an Incumbent Senator by Record Setting Numbers.”
Speaking to supporters after the result was known, Cassidy made a thinly veiled reference to the president, saying, “Insults only bother me if they come from somebody of character and integrity, and I find that people of character and integrity don’t spend their time attacking people on the internet.”
“Our country is not about one individual,” he said. “It is about the welfare of all Americans, and it is about our Constitution.”
The Louisiana primary comes in the middle of a month of campaigns by Trump to exact retribution on politicians who have crossed him. On May 5 he helped dislodge five of seven Indiana state senators who rejected his redistricting plan.
Next Tuesday, U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky will face a Trump-backed challenger, Ed Gallrein, in another Republican primary. Massie angered Trump by opposing his signature tax legislation over concerns about the national debt, pushing for the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files and opposing his decision to go to war with Iran.
By receiving less than 50% of the vote, Letlow and Fleming, a former U.S. House member and Trump administration official, were unable to avoid the runoff, which will take place June 27. The GOP winner will almost certainly take the November general election because of the state’s Republican leanings.
Jeanelle Chachere, a 66-year-old nurse, said she considers Cassidy “a phony” and voted for Letlow solely because Trump endorsed her.
“I’m going by what he says, because I like what he does,” she said.
The election was scrambled by a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision gutting a part of the Voting Rights Act that affects how congressional maps are drawn. Although the Senate primary is moving forward, Louisiana leaders decided to delay House primaries until a future date to allow them to redo district lines ahead of time, a shift that threatened to cause confusion for voters on Saturday.
Mary-Patricia Wray, who has consulted for Republican and Democratic candidates in Louisiana, said the change could weigh against Cassidy by dampening turnout among voters who are less fervently pro-Trump.
“Suspending the congressional primaries hurts Cassidy,” she said. “Some people believe the Senate primary is canceled.”
Cassidy also complained that a new primary system enacted last year confused voters by requiring them to ask for a partisan ballot instead of the all-party primary previously in place. He said some called his office to say they had been unable to vote for him.
“The process that was set up was destined to be confusing,” Cassidy told reporters Friday.
Dadrius Lanus, executive director of the state Democratic Party, said his team fielded hundreds of calls from voters statewide who said the changes undermined their ability vote as they planned.
“A lot of the information should have gotten to voters well in advance,” Lanus said. “It’s literally been a whirlwind of confusion.”
Cassidy waged an aggressive campaign to convince voters he should not be counted out.
The senator's campaign was expected to have spent roughly $9.6 million on advertising through May 16, according to the ad-tracking firm AdImpact. And Louisiana Freedom Fund, a super PAC supporting him, was on track to spend $12.3 million.
By comparison Letlow’s campaign, which launched Jan. 20, spent roughly $3.9 million, while a super PAC backing her, the Accountability Project, spent about $6 million.
Fleming's campaign spent about $1.5 million.
Cassidy and Louisiana Freedom Fund ran ads attacking Letlow within days of her entering the race for supporting diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, which Trump has tried to root out of the federal government.
Letlow, a college administrator before her election to the House, said she supported DEI while interviewing for the position of president of University of Louisiana-Monroe in 2020.
The ads, an attempt to characterize Letlow as a progressive trying to pass as a conservative, were one way Cassidy tried to flip the script in a race where he was on the outs with Trump.
The senator's vote in favor of convicting the president after his 2021 impeachment has shadowed Cassidy throughout his second Senate term.
John Martin, a 68-year-old retired engineer in south Louisiana, said he would vote for Letlow because he was still upset by Cassidy's decision. He waved a flyer from Letlow’s campaign showing her standing alongside the president.
“I know a lot more about Cassidy than I do about her,” Martin said. “But if she’s endorsed by Trump, I’m going to believe that.”
Cassidy steered clear of Trump’s ire last year, supporting Kennedy to lead the Department of Health and Human Services despite his public reservations about the nominee’s anti-vaccine views.
As chair of the Senate health committee, Cassidy has been more publicly critical of Kennedy, including over funding cuts for vaccine development.
Trump blamed Cassidy for the failed nomination of his second choice for surgeon general, Casey Means, who raised doubts about vaccinating newborns for hepatitis B, a practice Cassidy supports. Trump withdrew the Means nomination and blasted Cassidy.
Letlow considered running last year but only entered the race after Trump announced his endorsement in January.
By that time Fleming, a former House member and Trump administration official who was elected state treasurer in 2023, was already in the race as a Trump devotee. But Landry was looking for a better-known challenger, and he suggested Letlow to the president.
Letlow had an unconventional and tragic entry into politics.
In 2020, while she was a college administrator, her husband Luke was elected to the U.S. House but died of COVID-19 before he could be sworn in. Letlow ran for and won the seat in a March 2021 special election and was reelected in 2022 and 2024.
Beaumont reported from Des Moines, Iowa.
U.S. Senate candidate Rep. Julia Letlow, R-La., speaks to media during an election night watch party Saturday, May 16, 2026, in Baton Rouge, La. (AP Photo/Matthew Hinton)
Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., left, speaks to supporters alongside his wife, Laura, during an election night watch party Saturday, May 16, 2026, in Baton Rouge, La. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
U.S. Senate candidate Rep. Julia Letlow, R-La., speaks to media during an election night watch party Saturday, May 16, 2026, in Baton Rouge, La. (AP Photo/Matthew Hinton)
U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., greets supporters at a campaign stop at Drago's Restaurant Tuesday, May 5, 2026, in Metairie, La. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
U.S. Senate candidate, current Louisiana treasurer and former U.S. Representative (R-La.) John Fleming, speaks at a Ronald Reagan Newsmaker Luncheon in Baton Rouge, La., Tuesday, May 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
U.S. Senate candidate Julia Letlow greets supporters at a campaign stop at Hammond Northshore Regional Airport in Hammond, La., Wednesday, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., greets supporters at a campaign stop at Drago's Restaurant Tuesday, May 5, 2026, in Metairie, La. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
