J.D. Martinez Archives

It looked as though the Red Sox were headed to their first extra-innings game of 2020 on Sunday when Mitch Moreland ended it all, breaking the 3-3 tie with a walk-off, two-run homer. It was Moreland’s second home run of the game, the 13th multi-HR game of his career.

The Moreland blast was all the more dramatic coming with two outs. Since 2010, RedSox Nation has cheered seven, two-out walk-off homers. Moreland and Christian Vázquez have been credited with two each.

It was the first walk-off win for the Red Sox since the 2019 finale when Mookie Betts electrically scored the winning run in his memorable curtain call at Fenway Park.

Sunday’s 5-3 win paired with Friday’s victory gave the Sox their first home series win of the season. They’re 2-3-1 in series play in 2020 overall. The loss meant the Blue Jays are still in search of their first series win of the season. It was Toronto’s third walk-off loss in 2020.

Sox starter Nathan Eovaldi came away with a no-decision, despite a decent outing. Yes, he allowed two solo home runs, but over 6.0 innings racked up 10 strikeouts and walked none. The much-maligned Sox bullpen combined for 3.0 innings of shutout relief. The pen’s ERA stands at 1.50 over the past four games.

If you like watching strikeouts, Sunday’s game had plenty to offer. Red Sox pitching struck out 15 Blue Jays. Toronto pitching reciprocated with a dozen strikeouts of the home team. The 27 combined punchouts, an increasingly common calling card of the modern game, was the 5th-most in a Major League game this season.

Absent Offense

Once again, Red Sox offense sputtered and squandered opportunities. The Sox combined for only four hits again on Sunday, just as they did the night before. It was the first set of back-to-back home games with four or fewer hits since August 2018 and the first time by Toronto pitching since April 1992.

First Time Record

Sunday’s was the first Red Sox win in Fenway Park history after recording four or fewer hits and 12 or more strikeouts.

The only other such victory in club history was September 5, 1905 against the Philadelphia Athletics.

J.D. Martinez, Rafael Devers and Andrew Benintendi have gone a combined 5-for-54 (.093) over their past five games. Sox Nation, longing for positive signs in the tea leaves, took some comfort from Devers’ 6th-inning home run Sunday, projected at 449 feet, the 2nd-longest of his career.

For Benintendi, the struggles have been excruciating to watch. A perennial slow starter, Benintendi’s extended plight (he is 2-for-36 (.056) overall) is all the more amplified by the abbreviated season where every game counts as almost three.

Without video, Martinez slides

Across the league players are barred this season from in-game video, something that seems to have impacted J.D. Martinez heavily. Martinez is known to be an avid consumer of video analysis in seasons past.

Through 15 teams games of 2020, Martinez’ .196 AVG is the worst start of his career. Before 2020 Martinez had never recorded no home runs over his team’s first 15 games of a season, had never before slugged as low as this year (.321).

Martinez, hopefully, is tuning out pockets of Red Sox Nation who want him to just try harder and to “get over” not having access to a critical tool. They remind him that Sox greats like Ted Williams produced at elite levels without technology, as though Martinez’ fine-grained use of video analysis is akin to flipping through emails on their iPhone.

But Martinez’ reliance on video is a big part of how he became one of the games’ top sluggers. Preventing him from using it is like asking your doctor to be just as effective without blood tests, an EKG, or an MRI machine. Certainly, modern doctors without tools still have education, experience, and instinct, but the notion they can be just as effective diagnosing problems without the tools they normally rely upon is laughable.

Odds and ends from the weekend series…In addition to being limited to just four hits in their loss on Saturday, the Sox failed to record an extra-base hit. Boston has not won a home game with just a run and no XBH since April 29, 2008…The weekend games marked the one-quarter mark in the shortened 2020 season…The Blue Jays had gone 10 games without an error until Saturday. It had been their longest error-less streak since August 2015…The Boston bullpen has allowed 3 runs in 18.0 IP over the club’s last 4 games and stranded 15 of 16 inherited runners in 2020…TV host Tom Caron marked his 25th anniversary with NESN on Sunday. Caron makes his job look easy, which is a real credit to him. Caron is a bright spot in Boston sports media.

One by one Red Sox players, managers and executives have been talking with the press during the start to Spring Training in Florida. The brief question-and-answer sessions have been mostly predictable stuff, with the players clearly well-coached on what to say and what topics best to avoid.

Along the way, for example, we’ve heard Chris Sale say his elbow feels good, Xander Bogaerts predict that it will be an exciting season, and we learned that newcomer Alex Verdugo can’t wait to meet his idol, David Ortiz.

But on Monday afternoon, in response to being asked whether he found it hard to square his personal views of Alex Cora (“the best manager I ever had”) with the reality that Cora was at the center of the Astros’ sign-stealing controversy, J.D. Martinez‘ response was both thoughtful and insightful.

Honestly, when [the Commissioners’ report of the Astros’ activities came to light], I was very, kind of, shocked by it. I wasn’t aware. I didn’t even know, for as much time as he was mentioned [in the report], it obviously caught me off guard.

I can put my hand on anything—go through any lie detector, whatever—when Alex came here he never influenced us in any way to do that. Never even mentioned it.

I didn’t even know [the Astros] were doing it. I didn’t find out until Mike [Fiers] mentioned it to me, when he was in Oakland,…cause I’m friends with him and he kind of brought it up to me…That was the first time I ever heard of it. But I didn’t know that Alex was so involved in it.

Obviously, people make mistakes and it is what it is. I think he’s feeling it now. But that doesn’t change my view on him, and the way he treated me as a human, and the way he treated me as a person…I still have great respect for him.”

J.D. Martinez

Red Sox DH/Outfielder

At the Sox Winter Weekend in Springfield last month (shortly after Cora and the Red Sox parted ways), Martinez went on the record with a forceful repudiation of the investigation into the 2018 Red Sox. “I’m excited for the investigation to get over with,” Martinez said at the time. “Just so they can see there was nothing going on here.”

Martinez Doubles Down

Now Martinez has doubled down on his beliefs that the 2018 team was blameless, saying on Monday that Cora “never influenced us in any way to” steal signs illegally. And like just about everyone else in the Red Sox organization, continued to express a great deal of respect for Cora, despite the accusations and pending sanctions from Major League Baseball against the former manager.

MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said Sunday that the investigation into the 2018 Sox should be done by February 28, adding rather ominously that ” a couple of developments” had required investigators to perform some re-interviews.

In remarks on Monday, Red Sox principal owner John Henry said “I don’t think anything…has changed” with respect to earlier confidence that investigators will find the 2018 team did not cheat.

Red Sox Walk-Off With A Win Even As Offense Sputters