This article is part of our Collette Calls series.
The Red Sox have been worse than most expected this season, and no player on their roster better encapsulates the team's struggles than J.D. Martinez. This has been an age-32 season for the designated hitter, but he has looked years older, and not in a good way. As play began Sept. 21, Martinez owned a .205/.287/.373 batting line with six home runs and 23 runs driven in. By every measure, it has been an incredibly disappointing season for a potential free agent after season in a potentially lucrative market if the universal DH is here to stay. It is too early to say this is a Pat Burrell-like fall from grace, but nothing in the underlying data pointed to Martinez having this type of season. In fact, most of the data pointed to the exact opposite.
This is what I said about Martinez before the season to set the table for the type of season I thought Martinez could have as I drafted him in three of my own leagues:
J.D. Martinez is a top-10 player. Honestly, there isn't much room for a bold prediction for a guy whose ADP is 24 with a range of 10 to 42, but with the news that Mookie Betts is mostly likely no longer on this roster, this feels more like a bold prediction than it would have been a month ago.
Martinez dealt with back issues throughout 2019, and a quick google search will show multiple times where he was
The Red Sox have been worse than most expected this season, and no player on their roster better encapsulates the team's struggles than J.D. Martinez. This has been an age-32 season for the designated hitter, but he has looked years older, and not in a good way. As play began Sept. 21, Martinez owned a .205/.287/.373 batting line with six home runs and 23 runs driven in. By every measure, it has been an incredibly disappointing season for a potential free agent after season in a potentially lucrative market if the universal DH is here to stay. It is too early to say this is a Pat Burrell-like fall from grace, but nothing in the underlying data pointed to Martinez having this type of season. In fact, most of the data pointed to the exact opposite.
This is what I said about Martinez before the season to set the table for the type of season I thought Martinez could have as I drafted him in three of my own leagues:
J.D. Martinez is a top-10 player. Honestly, there isn't much room for a bold prediction for a guy whose ADP is 24 with a range of 10 to 42, but with the news that Mookie Betts is mostly likely no longer on this roster, this feels more like a bold prediction than it would have been a month ago.
Martinez dealt with back issues throughout 2019, and a quick google search will show multiple times where he was scratched from the lineup with back tightness, a sore back or back spasms. Yet, he still had more than 650 plate appearances for a second consecutive season and still managed to finished in the top 15th percentile in exit velocity, hard hit balls and expected offensive production. It was considered a disappointment because it was a step back from his amazing 2018 season, but a bad core will do that to a guy. He still had an expected batting average of .309 last season with a xSLG of .579.
He is still an elite hitter, especially against lefties, and while the loss of Betts has an impact on the lineup, Martinez still is well-insulated in the Boston lineup with the likes of Rafael Devers, Xander Bogaerts, and others hitting around him. Martinez has the ability to opt out of his contract after this season, and may choose to do so if the Red Sox continue to shed talent and payroll for a long-term plan that he might not want to be part of. A motivated slugger with his talents is a scary thought for American League pitchers.
The overall numbers this year look even worse against the backdrop of his numbers from 2015-2019:
Season | Pitches | Barrel% | Exit Velo | xBA | xSLG | xwOBA | xwOBACON | Hard Hit% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
2015 | 2605 | 18% | 91.3 | 0.281 | 0.602 | 0.401 | 0.539 | 49% |
2016 | 2022 | 14% | 91.5 | 0.294 | 0.577 | 0.402 | 0.514 | 47% |
2017 | 1911 | 19% | 91.0 | 0.295 | 0.687 | 0.431 | 0.578 | 49% |
2018 | 2519 | 16% | 93.0 | 0.311 | 0.628 | 0.425 | 0.533 | 53% |
2019 | 2463 | 12% | 91.3 | 0.306 | 0.579 | 0.403 | 0.486 | 48% |
2020 | 811 | 10% | 89.2 | 0.233 | 0.457 | 0.325 | 0.399 | 40% |
He turned 33 a few weeks back, and we know hitters decline with age, but this has been a roller-coaster like plunge from dominance for Martinez. 2019 was his previous low point, and he had back issues we could point at throughout the season as reasons why he was just damn good instead of amazing at the plate that season.
This year, he lack the physical issues to blame, but we can perhaps look at the mental ones. For one, Martinez is on the record with being very unhappy with the lack of access to video instructional tools during the game. The COVID-19 operations manual strictly prohibts "use of any communal video terminals." The system MLB teams have enjoyed the previous few years give them a four-angled on-demand view of their swing so they can analyze their swing between at bats. One would have to imagine Martinez took full advantage of this in-game as a full-time DH without the worries of needing to take the field whereas his teammates would have to do it after coming off the field the next inning. Boston is also terrible this year (womp womp) and the lack of a real crowd noise might also weigh on Martinez to stay motivated as he is playing for a last place team and seeing fewer fans in the stands than he saw in Houston playing for the rebuilding Astros.
Pitching-wise, the league continues to give him a similar mixture of pitches with fastballs being the predominant pitch. The big issue now is he is doing absolutely nothing with the fastball and it is surprising the league is not throwing him more:
Season | PA | BA | xBA | SLG | xSLG | wOBA | xwOBA | EV | LA | Whiff% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
2015 | 373 | 0.314 | 0.318 | 0.572 | 0.683 | 0.404 | 0.450 | 92.0 | 16.0 | 22% |
2016 | 304 | 0.324 | 0.311 | 0.584 | 0.612 | 0.416 | 0.434 | 92.3 | 15.0 | 20% |
2017 | 253 | 0.366 | 0.348 | 0.838 | 0.812 | 0.514 | 0.504 | 92.5 | 14.0 | 24% |
2018 | 316 | 0.361 | 0.343 | 0.687 | 0.672 | 0.467 | 0.459 | 94.1 | 11.0 | 19% |
2019 | 296 | 0.318 | 0.340 | 0.574 | 0.649 | 0.404 | 0.446 | 93.1 | 12.0 | 19% |
2020 | 109 | 0.194 | 0.253 | 0.376 | 0.527 | 0.288 | 0.363 | 90.9 | 17.0 | 23% |
We don't have a public manner to measure bat speed, but that kind of statistical dropoff on fastballs is something the league will want to exploit over the course of a full season. The fastball frequency has not changed much in season, but the league is now throwing him more breaking balls off the fastball, and he is hitting .203 with a a 38 percent whiff rate on breaking pitches this year as well.
We thought Martinez would be well-isolated in a lineup, even without Mookie Betts, lineup around him, and that has mostly held up. While many players started slowly, the lineup around him has hit well even if Martinez has not. Xander Bogaerts has a .356 wOBA, Alex Verdugo is even higher at .383, and Rafael Devers checks in at .365. Mitch Moreland is no longer around, but he was blowing away pitchers with a .479 wOBA. Anyone who has watched Boston play this year recognizes its hitting has not been the problem. Perhaps they would be a .500 team if Martinez had even 80 percent of the type of season he has had in recent years.
The other missing part of Martinez's game this year is his disappearance against southpaws. Martinez has always put up premier level production against lefty pitchers, but this season, even that statistical safe haven is nowhere to be found:
Season | PA | BA | xBA | SLG | xSLG | wOBA | xwOBA | EV | LA | Whiff% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
2015 | 134 | 0.265 | 0.258 | 0.538 | 0.560 | 0.385 | 0.393 | 93.4 | 17.0 | 34% |
2016 | 130 | 0.303 | 0.289 | 0.487 | 0.581 | 0.354 | 0.394 | 91.4 | 15.0 | 24% |
2017 | 105 | 0.376 | 0.352 | 0.892 | 0.831 | 0.531 | 0.504 | 93.5 | 20.0 | 30% |
2018 | 144 | 0.336 | 0.297 | 0.580 | 0.584 | 0.406 | 0.395 | 92.0 | 12.0 | 28% |
2019 | 161 | 0.401 | 0.364 | 0.876 | 0.787 | 0.535 | 0.498 | 91.5 | 14.0 | 28% |
2020 | 54 | 0.245 | 0.255 | 0.449 | 0.531 | 0.310 | 0.345 | 87.5 | 12.0 | 29% |
The sample size this year is what it is, but if it could go wrong for Martinez this year, it has.
Ultimately, I firmly believe this is a mental thing. He has had hit habits and systems disrupted, and now has had to play for a team clearly in rebuilding mode. He went through that in Houston and Detroit, before getting a taste of the postseason life in 2017 with Arizona and winning it all in 2018 with Boston. Now, he finds himself contractually obligated to a team on the backslide and has to decide whether it is worth the $20M in hand each season not to opt out of his current deal, or if he tests the free-agent market this winter. Should the league universally adopt the DH, Martinez would certainly take advantage of the larger pool of suitors and likely take the chance that another team would want his services.
Martinez has $38M left to him over the next two seasons, so even if he does not opt out, there is little guarantee he would remain in Boston who would likely want to move the aging slugger off their books to acquire younger and more flexible pieces for their future. Either way, Martinez will be an interesting player to forecast this winter because 2020 was quite a disruption to what appeared to be one of the better hitters in the game.
