After dream season, Victor Martinez enduring nightmare start
By Tim Haberin
The 2015 season hasn’t quite followed the script in the mind of Victor Martinez. The Detroit Tigers designated hitter is coming off a sensational 2014 in which he finished as the runner-up in the American League MVP race. He belted a career-high 32 home runs and drove in 103. His .335 average (another personal best) was just .006 off the pace set by reigning batting champ Jose Altuve. His .974 OPS led all of Major League Baseball by a sizable margin. Not many ballplayers enjoy a career year at age 35, but V-Mart did.
Many expected a natural letdown of sorts this season, but Martinez could fall well short of last year’s numbers and still be his usual productive self at the plate. Unfortunately for the veteran slugger, he has struggled, and struggled mightily. Martinez is hitting for a pitiful .216/.308/.270 slash line thus far. He’s collected 15 RBI and hit just one homer. And although he is drawing walks at virtually the same rate as last season, he is striking out considerably more: his current 10% K rate is up from 6.6% in 2014.
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But are V-Mart’s troubles as simple as out-of-whack plate discipline? Martinez, no stranger to health issues, raised some red flags during Spring Training as he contended with a knee injury. He underwent surgery during the winter for a torn meniscus and was hampered by its effects throughout the spring. In fact, continued inflammation in the knee compelled Detroit to place him on the 15-day DL yesterday.
The Tigers are hopeful that Martinez will see a big difference after his knee is rested. “There’s a weakness created by the surgery,” said manager Brad Ausmus. “It’s created an issue in another part of the knee. We’re just not seeing the real Victor. We’re seeing a shell of what Victor is. We told him not to pick up a bat for about a week.”
That line of thinking might not be wrong. Martinez is certainly hitting the ball nowhere near as hard as he usually does, which could be an effect of the knee problem. Fangraphs classifies 26.7% of his batted balls this year as hard-hit. That is nearly a 13% drop from last year. His soft-hit percentage has more than doubled, from 10.1% to 22.8%. He’s hitting fly balls at about the same rate, but they’re not leaving the park like they did last year: his HR/FB rate sits at 2.7%, down from last year’s 16%.
Across the board, V-Mart just isn’t showing the authority we’ve grown accustomed to seeing from him at the plate. The Tigers have their fingers crossed that it will return for the most part once he gets healthy. At this point, however, you also have to wonder how much of a decline is due to age. As mentioned previously, players rarely put up career years at 35 years old. For someone ten years younger, you would project further progression and improvement. In Martinez’s case, last year could just be a late and unexpected peak that he simply won’t come close to scaling again.
Detroit Tigers
Fortunately for Detroit, their offense hasn’t exactly sputtered amid Martinez’s struggles. They have scored 173 runs, 11th-most in MLB. Miguel Cabrera‘s sizzling start (1.034 OPS), even by his standards, has softened the blow from V-Mart’s lack of production. Newcomers Yoenis Cespedes (13 2B, 23 RBI) and Anthony Gose (.324 BA) have been key contributors in the outfield. Ian Kinsler (.314 BA) and J.D. Martinez (8 HR, 18 RBI) are also swinging the bat well.
At 23-17 and 2.5 games back of division-leading Kansas City, the Tigers have not been sunk by Victory Martinez’s woes by any means. But if they want to seize control of the AL Central and potentially make a deep playoff run, getting V-Mart back to his productive ways would be a major boost to their chances. No one should expect a repeat of last year, when opposing pitchers grew so wary of Martinez they intentionally walked him an MLB-leading 28 times. But if he can come off the disabled list in a few weeks’ time to find some restored pop in his bat, his club will be much relieved.