The Bruin who manned the hot corner for the last two seasons is on his way to play professional baseball.
Third baseman Roman Martin was selected by the Athletics in the fourth round with the No. 111 pick overall. Martin was the fourth and final Bruin taken on day one of the 2026 MLB Draft. He is the first player out of Westwood to be drafted by the Athletics since 2016 when they took Luke Persico in the 12th round.
On a team with power hitters like No. 1 overall pick Roch Cholowsky and No. 70 overall pick Mulivai Levu, Martin has gone overlooked as the team’s cleanup man.
The Whittier, California, local slashed .333/.446/.549 in his junior season with the Bruins, where he knocked in 53 RBIs and hit a team-best 18 doubles. His offense in 2026 built on the momentum he created during the Bruins’ 2025 run to the Men’s College World Series, their first since 2013. That postseason, Martin hit .375 and went 12-for-32 with a team-high 14 RBIs en route to Los Angeles Regional Most Outstanding Player honors.
And it felt like deja vu when Martin hit a home run in UCLA baseball’s first two postseason matchups in 2026.
The All-Big Ten honoree finished his 2026 campaign with 24 multi-hit games. He cut his strikeout rate from 31.5% in his freshman season to 17.7% as a sophomore, before maintaining at 19.4% as a junior.
When he wasn’t delivering clutch knocks for the team, he was manning the hot corner.
Martin began using Cholowsky’s third baseman glove when he became the everyday starter on the corner of the diamond in the 2025 season.
But 2026 is where he proved his skill was there, anchoring the infield with 83 assists to only eight errors in a position that consistently requires quick thinking and near-zero reaction times.
That experience will serve as the foundation for the next chapter of his baseball career.
