Are these the last days of Martinez with the Sox?
BOSTON — Xander Bogaerts sought and received reassurance that he will remain with the Red Sox beyond the trade deadline. The same cannot be said of J.D. Martinez.
Martinez gets the drill. Unlike Bogaerts, who has spent his entire professional career (nearly 13 years) in one organization, the 34-year-old Martinez has seen the other side of the industry. He was released by the Astros in the spring of 2014, traded by the Tigers to the Diamondbacks as a free-agent-to-be in 2017, signed with the Red Sox in the spring of 2018, and has spent time in each of the last three offseasons deciding whether it made sense to opt out of his contract.
Given that reality, he considers being traded before this year’s deadline a possibility — and even a likelihood, particularly if the Red Sox don’t reverse their considerable slide.
“I’ve been in this game too long,” Martinez said about whether he’d sought clarity from the front office. “The Red Sox are a first-class organization, but the industry in total, it’s a business. At the end of the day, it’s a business and everyone’s going to treat it that way. So I don’t get involved in that. I kind of just focus on what I can control, who I’m facing on the mound.
Does Martinez believe he’ll be with the Red Sox after Tuesday?
“Not if we don’t start winning. That’s about as simple as I can put it,” Martinez said Thursday,prior to his team’s 4-2 win over Cleveland. “I would understand it. I wouldn’t be upset about it. Of course I want to be here, stay here. I’m a lot more comfortable here. I would prefer the club wins today, starts a winning streak, and makes it real hard on them.”
Even a winning streak might not be enough to prevent Martinez from being dealt. According to industry sources, there is a good likelihood that the Red Sox will deal Martinez — who is in the final season of a five-year, $110 million deal — regardless of their performance leading up to the deadline.
One American League executive opined that Martinez is “as good as gone,” even if Boston remains in the thick of the wildcard race.
What would be the logic of dealing Martinez if they hope to contend?
He has provided solid but unspectacular production this year, hitting .293/.361/.466 with nine homers and 30 doubles in 82 games — good enough to earn his fourth All-star nod in five years with the Sox, but not the same power threat he’s been in prior years.
“I do believe that the first few months of the season, regardless of what people think of our numbers, it was kind of like the best version I’d seen of him, hitting the ball consistently on a nightly basis,” said Sox manager Alex Cora. “At the end, the OPS is always there, it’s always been.
“He was doing it a different way, hitting doubles, hitting rockets to right field. His swing decisions at one point during the season, they were on point, and then he got off. I think he was just trying to create [power] or it was just part of the season.
“But I think overall, regardless of the homers, he was really, really good for for two months, two months and a half. He’s been really good for us.”
Yet Martinez has struggled to regain his timing since his return from a back injury that sidelined him the first four days after the All-star break, going 0 for 10 with two walks in the last three games.
“Seven days with the back thing kind of messed up my timing,” said Martinez. “[After] the All-star break, it couldn’t have been a worse time to take another four days.”
Meanwhile, his inability to play the field — he has not worn a glove in a game this year — has been a roster limitation, particularly with the Sox managing the health of players such as Devers and Bogaerts while trying to keep them in the lineup.
If the Sox traded Martinez and acquired a player who could help in the field, they could use the DH spot to manage the playing time of their overall roster. In that sense, Martinez may be in a different category than other free-agentsto-be such as Nate Eovaldi and Christian Vázquez.