J.D. Martinez was getting tired of waiting by the phone, so around the middle of March, he issued his agent, Scott Boras, a directive: Today is Monday. If we don’t make progress toward a free-agent deal by Friday, I’m going to retire.
As Martinez remembers it, the New York Mets called on Thursday.
Four months after Martinez came within 24 hours of beginning his career as an amateur pickleball player-slash-fisherman, it seems clear he made the right choice: Since shortly after a team meeting in which he encouraged Mets hitters to take accountability for their at bats, he has led them on a 28–15 run to put them in position for a playoff berth. At 36, and even having missed the first month of the season, he has been the seventh-most valuable designated hitter in the sport and a top-20 hitter overall.
“I’m glad he didn’t retire,” says Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns. (Stearns declines comment on Martinez’s recollection of events, but it is perhaps worth noting that the club reportedly spoke with Boras in February. Martinez says he prefers to remain uninvolved in discussions with teams until they make a firm offer.)
Martinez found his skill set—he devotes nearly all his energy to hitting, and he has played 12 innings in the field since 2021—in opposition to the modern roster construction trend emphasizing versatility.
“It's crazy when you hear teams talk about like, ‘Oh, we want the flexibility [to rotate players through the DH spot],’” he says. “You're like, ‘Wait a minute. The best teams in baseball, they don’t have that. They got dogs in that position.’” (Indeed, of the 10 teams that have received the most value from their DH spot, eight of them boast one primary player in that role.)
Martinez was an All-Star last year with the Los Angeles Dodgers, and he hasn’t had an OPS-plus below 117 in a full season since 2013, when he revamped his swing. He signed a five-year, $110 million deal with the Boston Red Sox before the ’18 season, and a one-year, $10 million deal with L.A. last year, but he says he has never enjoyed the free-agent process, even when it ends well. And he especially did not enjoy this year’s.
“I felt like I wasn’t asking for anything crazy,” he says. “I was just asking for two years and a little bit more than I made last year.” He adds, “It’s very frustrating. Especially after the years you put up. Like you expect it if you had a bad year, but when you have a good year, you’re expecting to get kind of rewarded for it. And then when everyone’s barking the same tune, you’re like, Hold on. Is this way supposed to be? Is this the way it was designed?”
In the end, the San Francisco Giants offered a little more money than the Mets, but Martinez has a career .637 OPS at Oracle Park. He wants to play one more year after this one, and he knew if he struggled, he wouldn’t get the chance. “That’s not how I want to end my career,” he says. “If they had offered me two years, I would’ve gone.”
He started to feel like no one wanted him to play baseball anymore, and he began to think maybe he didn’t want to play baseball anymore, either.
“I know how much effort I put into this game,” he says. “Studying my video, going home and studying all night—it takes so much time out of my life, to actually have a life outside of baseball, that comes to the point where you’re just weighing your options. Have you made enough in your career? Do you really want to go through this again? I was kind of at that point.”
But he signed on March 21 for one year and $12 million, and after a minor league ramp-up and a week of rest for an aching back, he debuted with the Mets on April 26. They quickly learned why he has a reputation as a hitting savant who drew rave reviews from, among others, Mookie Betts, his teammate with Boston and L.A., and Xander Bogaerts, his teammate with the Red Sox. Teammates would come to Martinez when they were in a slump, and he would study video with them until they emerged from it.
Martinez preaches consistency and works with other hitters to refine their mechanics and hone their approach. That degree of involvement could cause friction with hitting coaches, who are paid to refine hitters’ mechanics and hone their approach, but manager Carlos Mendoza says the relationship has been smooth in New York. “His ability to get on the same page with the hitting coaches is really good,” he says. “They kind of blend everything together.”
His teammates seem to be enjoying his presence.
“I’m pretty sure he sleeps with a bat next to him,” says second baseman José Iglesias, who played with Martinez for the Detroit Tigers in 2015 and ’16.
“He’s really taken the art of hitting to the next level,” says left fielder Brandon Nimmo, who has enjoyed learning new drills from Martinez.
Shortstop Francisco Lindor says Martinez has helped “a lot” and that he doesn’t want to be more specific, because he believes the advice offers a competitive advantage.
And everyone speaks reverently of the pregame hitters’ meetings, in which Martinez has begun insisting that players describe their planned approach against the evening’s pitchers. Later, if they did not follow it, they need to explain why.
“Ever since we’ve been doing that, we’ve been really good offensively,” says third baseman Mark Vientos.
If they keep it up, they can look back fondly at the day they implemented the policy. Almost as fondly as they’ll look back on that Thursday.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as J.D. Martinez Turned His Free Agency Woes Into Fuel for the Revamped Mets.
