Martinez stays red-hot
Blasts three home runs Sunday vs. O’s
Saturday, J.D. Martinez had a cold.
Sunday, Martinez hit three home runs, including two to the opposite field and another to straightaway center to lead the Sox to a 14-9 win over the Orioles for their sixth straight victory.
RED SOX NOTEBOOK
With a chance to tie his own major league record in the ninth, Martinez swung and missed at a 3-2 breaking ball that fell out of the zone. He looked back at the pitcher, Paul Fry, and shook his head.
Martinez said he was swinging at the 3-2 pitch no matter what.
“I really don’t think he’s going to throw me a strike, but I have to take the chance, just to at least foul it off if it’s a really good pitch,” he said.
It’s been almost four years since he last hit four homers in a single game, earning him a share of the MLB record. He was with the Diamondbacks and in the midst of a hot streak he probably never thought he’d repeat.
“I’ll tell you if I’m Arizonahot,” Martinez told this reporter during one hot streak in 2018.
It looks like Martinez is on his way toward getting Arizona-hot.
While he hit a remarkable .302 with 29 homers in 62 games with the Diamondbacks after being traded in the middle of the 2017 season, he now has a .472 average with five homers, seven doubles and 16 RBIs in eight games, a pace that’s beyond comprehension (and surely impossible to sustain).
Asked if he was Arizonahot, he laughed.
“I wouldn’t say that,” he said. “That’s a long shot away. If I get to 12 home runs this month, you can ask me that question.”
Martinez doesn’t feel like he’s in a hot streak at all, actually.
“I think the moment you’re aware of it, you’re no longer in it, so I try to not be aware of it and just try to focus on the small tasks,” he said.
The Sox weren’t even sure if Martinez would be available to play on Sunday after he missed Saturday with cold symptoms while he awaited the results of a COVID-19 rapid test. He said he was frustrated to stay in his hotel all day.
They announced the lineup just about an hour before game time and there was Martinez, back in the threehole, as they activated him from the COVID-19 related injury list and optioned Michael Chavis back to the alternate site.
Martinez struck out in his first at-bat, then homered in his next three.
Laundry time
The Sox’ newest home run celebration involves a laundry cart stacked with towels.
It seems to be the backup catcher’s job to push whoever hits a homer in the laundry cart through a wave of high-fives in the dugout.
“It started last year,” said Rafael Devers. “I don’t remember who started it. It may have been (Christian) Vazquez or someone else. It was a last year thing we just carried over to this season.”
Said Martinez, “It’s just something stupid but fun. We enjoy it. Any little thing we can do to create some camaraderie with the guys and kind of bring everybody tighter and closer together, it’s been fun. We get a new cart every park. This one was too deep. It was freaking really deep. I was like, ‘you guys are going to have to carry me to get me out of this thing.’”
Chains come off Pivetta
Finally, the Red Sox let one of their starting pitchers go more than 92 pitches.
While managers around the league are being extra cautious with their starters after the short season last year, the Sox had been pulling theirs between 79 and 92 pitches until Sunday, when Nick Pivetta threw 101 pitches in six innings of four-run ball.
It was just the second time this season a Sox starter went more than 5L innings.
“I do believe right around the first week of May is when you start letting it go,” manager Alex Cora said. “I’m very pleased with the way we’ve thrown the ball, very pleased with the effort and the chances they’ve given us to win the game.”
Odds and ends…
Devers homered twice and Alex Verdugo went deep once as the Sox nearly doubled their home run total (seven entering Sunday) in one game.
“He feels really good about himself,” Cora said of Devers. “He hit some hard balls at home, it was just a matter of time.”
It was the fourth time in Red Sox history that one player hit three homers while another hit two. It had also been done by Nomar Garciaparra and Manny Ramirez in 2002, Garciaparra and Trot Nixon in 1999 and Bobby Doerr, Ted Williams and Walt Dropo in 1950…
Cora said he received his first round of the COVID-19 vaccine in Fort Myers before the season started, but no Red Sox players have been vaccinated.
The team plans to present some medical information to the players when they return to Boston and Cora hopes they’ll get to the 85% vaccination rate that will allow certain restrictions to loosen…
All four of the Sox’ games in Minnesota this week will be played during the day in order to avoid nighttime foot traffic while the George Floyd trial is taking place.