NEW GUY IN TOWN MAKES BIG IMPACT
How much difference can one batter really make? And what’s the value of lineup presence? Replacing David Ortiz was always going to be the Red Sox’ biggest challenge since they found him in 2003. He’d been the heart of the offense for more than a decade, and when he finally retired in 2016, the Sox hoped Hanley Ramirez could fill the void. Ramirez was just OK. He took too many big swings, wasn’t consistent and didn’t look healthy. He wasn’t the hitter he once was, the hitter GM Ben Cherington had hoped he could be. And while the rest of the Sox offense was solid in 2017, it was clearly missing a middleof-the-order presence.
That’s why, even when the saga dragged on deep into February 2018, it seemed inevitable from the start that the Red Sox were going to sign J.D. Martinez.
He had been a monster for the Arizona Diamondbacks after being traded in the middle of the 2017 season, hitting .302 with 29 homers in just 62 games, a time that to this day Martinez describes as the hottest he’s ever been. (If you ask him how hot he feels, the benchmark is always, ‘are you hot, or Arizona-hot?’)
Dave Dombrowski read the market correctly and never overpaid for Martinez, instead offering him what looked like a fair deal of five years, $110 million.
Martinez was officially introduced on Feb. 26, 2018, and made a prediction. “I’m expecting, hopefully, to do a lot of damage,” he told us in Fort Myers. “That’s the game plan coming in.”
Eight months later, the dodamage slogan would be one to be remembered as the Red Sox hoisted a World Series trophy in large part due to Martinez, who had one of the best offensive seasons in baseball history.
In another time, he might’ve been the MVP of the American League. But at a time when the complete baseball player, defense and all, was being appreciated, the designated hitter was left behind.
Martinez, though, was an immediate presence for the Red Sox lineup. And then-manager Alex Cora knew it.
It wasn’t just that Martinez could swing the bat better than most. It was the way he went about it. He was so methodical and prepared. He studied video like a thief scouting a bank’s architectural plans while preparing for a heist. He settled for nothing less than being certain about the opposing pitcher’s tendencies, then moved onto his own
swing, which demanded video-recording every time it was in action.
“That’s also something he’s going to bring to us, as far as preparation and using information,” Cora said early that season. “We were talking about it the last two months. Now we got a guy, he believes in it. I know he’s willing to share information. That’s going to be an asset for us.”
Martinez started out slow, going just 4-for-20 on the Sox’ opening road trip. Giancarlo Stanton was being booed in the Bronx for a similarly slow start with his new team, but Sox fans were mostly patient with Martinez, who needed seven games to notch his first home run.
“That really didn’t get into my head,” he said after hitting it on April 7. “What was getting into my head was the fact that I wasn’t hitting the ball in the air. I preach about getting the ball in the air. Whenever you see me and I’m hitting ground ball after ground ball, you know I’m not feeling right.”
He hit .335 with 42 more home runs from that point on.
Mr. Clutch for the Red Sox that year, Martinez came through in a huge game in New York on May 11, when the Sox were tied with the Yankees, and Dellin Betances entered the game in the eighth inning.
Martinez took him deep and the Sox won, 5-4. The Sox were down a game in the A.L. East when Martinez homered to send them to victory. They would eventually win the division by eight games.
“I was kind of hoping that we can almost slow them down, in a sense,” he said at the time. “They’ve been hot. Just to kind of put a stop to them, and for us to at least take one here and avoid the sweep was huge.”
It wasn’t just the home runs that made Martinez dangerous in 2018.
He hit .386 with runners in scoring position, and .422 with two outs and runners in scoring position.
“I think of myself as more of an all-around hitter instead of just a slugger,” he said. “Yeah, I’ll run into something and I’ll get something and I’ll have my numbers and stuff like that. But to me it’s a balance type of deal.”
Cora was preaching that since Day 1 when Martinez arrived.
“I wish you guys can see the preparation that goes on, not only before games, but during games,” Cora said. “This guy, I keep saying it, there’s not too many guys like him.”
And while many wondered how Martinez, who likes to use the opposite field, would hit at Fenway Park, he finished the year with 26 of his 43 home runs at home.
“Like I said at the beginning when everybody asked me about the Green Monster and what am I going to do with the wall, I’m going to do me,” he said. “I’m not going to worry about that wall. That’s a trap, I feel like.”
With Martinez around, the entire lineup looked better. The offense increased its run production by more than a halfrun per game from 2017 to 2018. Rafael Devers took big steps, Xander Bogaerts became a power hitter and Mookie Betts turned into the MVP.
Betts, in particular, took a liking to Martinez’s style of preparation.
One day during the season, Martinez sat down and explained what he saw in Betts’ swing.
“I always flirt with the line of ‘little guys can’t hit the ball in the air’ thing,” he said. “That’s the common trend. In baseball, that’s what people say, ‘Oh well, you can do that but other ones can’t.’ I don’t believe in that. There are a lot of other people that would argue that, but for me and what I believe is, if you’re hitting the baseball the right way and you’re generating as much power, if you can hit a ball at 98 mph with the right angle, it’s going to be a home run.
“So I told him, I said ‘there’s no reason you can’t do it.’ And he’s like, ‘yeah, I don’t hit the ball as hard as you do.’ I said, ‘Mookie, if you can’t hit the ball 100 mph then you shouldn’t be here.’ Because it’s the truth. And he’s like, ‘I never thought of it that way.’ That’s what he does. He makes good contact, makes solid contact, and I think his mind is in the right place now where he’s kind of lining up and kind of understanding the swing and the mechanics behind it to be able to drive the ball that way better.”
Betts finished the year with the MVP trophy after hitting .346 with a career-high 32 home runs.
Martinez finished with a .330 average, 43 homers and 130 RBI.
In the playoffs, he drove in the Red Sox’ first runs with a three-run blast off J.A. Happ in the first inning of Game 1 of the Division Series against the Yankees that set the tone for a postseason in which he’d hit .300 with a .403 on-base percentage and 14 RBI on the way to a World Series title.