Why J.D. Martinez could work in Boston
Red Sox count on slugger to boost offense
FORT MYERS, Fla. – It’s 11⁄ 2 hours before a Red Sox game on the final weekend of spring training, and most of the players are relaxing in the clubhouse or playing table tennis.
J.D. Martinez is not among them. He flits in and out, an iPad loaded with game video his constant companion. The outcome of this exhibition might be meaningless, but that doesn’t keep Martinez from getting ready with his usual diligence.
The very same laser focus on pregame routine and preparation that has helped turn Martinez from a journeyman into one of the game’s most prolific sluggers might prove his salvation, as the Red Sox’s new outfielderdesignated hitter tries to avoid the first-year woes that have afflicted so many of his predecessors.
“I know J.D. well. He’s a guy who can handle the situation,” said president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski, who acquired Martinez in 2014 when he ran the Tigers. “He’s focused on what he does. I don’t think he’s going to change his approach. He’s been in pennant races; he’s been in scrutiny. So I think he’s mature enough to handle it.”
Boston has a way of testing newcomers, and plenty of them have failed. Dombrowski acknowledged that assessing whether a player can deal with the city’s demands forms part of the club’s evaluation process when deciding whom to pursue.
There’s a trail of big-money players who stumbled when first arriving in Boston. Some recovered to become productive contributors. Others never did, wilting under the intense scrutiny of New England’s insatiable media and fans.
Carl Crawford, a four-time All-Star with the Rays, never came close to that level again after signing a seven-year, $142 million contract with the Red Sox in December 2010. He lasted two miserable years in Beantown.
Pablo Sandoval, the MVP of the 2012 World Series, was run out of town 21⁄ brutal seasons 2 into a five-year, $95 million deal he signed in November 2014.
That same offseason, Hanley Ramirez came on board with a four-year, $88 million contract and promptly saw his on-base plus slugging percentage shrink from .817 to .717.
In fact, Crawford, Sandoval and Ramirez all dropped at least 80 OPS points in their first season in Boston. Ramirez is the only one of the three still around, and his tenure has been marked by inconsistency, partly because of injuries.
It’s not just the hitters. David Price, coming off a runner-up finish in the Cy Young Award balloting in 2015, got $217 million over seven years to join the Red Sox. His ERA rose from a leaguebest 2.45 to 3.99 in 2016, although he did go 17-9.
Closer extraordinaire Craig Kimbrel, obtained in a November 2015 trade, had an ERA of 3.40 — nearly twice his career norm of 1.80 — the next season before restoring normalcy with an utterly dominant 2017 that featured a 1.43 ERA and one strikeout per every two batters faced.
“It is different,” he said of pitching in Boston after playing for Atlanta and San Diego. “The baseball market is very large, the fan base is very large and the expectations are very large. Bring all those together, and it takes some getting used to, because not everywhere is as intense as Boston. But that doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing. It’s just learning how to handle that on a night-in and night-out basis.”
That will be the task facing Martinez, who agreed to a fiveyear, $110 million contract on Feb. 26 following protracted negotiations.
He emerged as the top power hitter on the market after averaging 35 home runs over the past three years, capped by a 45homer, 104-RBI, 1.066-OPS season in 2017, split between the Tigers and Diamondbacks. His .690 slugging percentage was the highest in the majors since Barry Bonds’ .812 mark in 2004.
Coming close to duplicating those numbers will require Martinez to stick to what has made him successful: video work, studying the pitchers, taking countless swings. That becomes more difficult with the increase in media requests he already noticed in spring training.
“That’s going to be the hardest thing for me, the media side of it,” Martinez said. “There’s always someone who wants to talk to you. You try to be respectful, but at the same time, you’re like, ‘Dude, I’ve got stuff to do. I’m not trying to blow you off.’ It’s just that it doesn’t stop.”
Martinez’s new teammates have told him Red Sox fans feel extraordinarily involved with the team, almost as if they’re in the batter’s box. Price, his former teammate with the Tigers, en- couraged Martinez to join him but also warned him to expect boos at times.
“It’s a place you always expect to be sold out, and the crowd’s right on top of you,” Price said of Fenway Park.
Martinez, 30, has thrived at the historic ballpark, batting .444 in 27 at-bats, though he has yet to go deep. He vows not to change his approach, which hinges on going up the middle and using the opposite field, to try to take advantage of the Green Monster in left field.
And he will try to heed the words of David Ortiz, the iconic designated hitter whose absence from the lineup was so notable last season, when the Red Sox finished last in the league in home runs.
In his eighth big-league season, Martinez will get the majority of his at-bats as a DH for the first time, and Ortiz told him not to fill the extra free time by constantly going to the hitting cage.
“He said, ‘If you do that, you’re going to take 9 billion swings. You’ll go crazy.’ And it’s true,” Martinez said.
Of course, that’s his tendency anyway. The only boy among six children raised by Julio and Mayra Martinez, both natives of Cuba, J.D. Martinez fell in love with hitting while growing up in the Miami area when former major league catcher Paul Casanova took him under his tutelage.
Martinez was the Astros’ 20th-round pick in the 2009 draft and, and after three nondescript reasons with the big club, was released late in spring training in 2014, just as he was implementing the swing changes that would transform his career.
He was called up by the Tigers in mid-April that year and has batted .300 with a .936 OPS since, relying on a meticulous routine that helps him extract every ounce of his talent.
“I hate going home knowing I didn’t do everything I could do to do my best that day,” Martinez said. “So if I get to the park and I’m just sitting there listening to my phone, playing a game or something like that, I feel like I’m not preparing. I feel like I’m not doing myself justice. ... It’s kind of the way I was raised. You get out what you put into it.”