Oakland Athletics Nick Martini more than intoxicating name
By Bill Felber
A player that has a notable name often struggles with notoriety beyond his name, but Oakland Athletics outfielder Nick Martini has had nearly the opposite issue as an underdog, in spite of his stirring name
When Oakland Athletics outfielder Nick Martini was tearing up the NCAA as a three-hole hitter at Kansas State, major league stardom was easy to imagine.
After all, Martini batted .356 as a freshman and .416 as a sophomore for the Wildcats, reaching base safely in an NCAA record 93 consecutive games. Taken in the seventh round of the 2011 draft by St. Louis, the surprise isn’t that Martini has now made it, but that it has taken so long.
“It was definitely tough,” Martini, a native of Crystal Lake, Ill., told NCAA Bay Area’s Ben Ross. “Especially when you see other people pass you. But those are things you can’t really control, so I just had to keep taking it day by day.”
Martini certainly paid his minor league dues, beginning with the Batavia Muckdogs of the short-A New York-Penn League in 2011. From there, his road to the majors wound through Quad Cities, Peoria, Palm Beach, Springfield, Memphis (several times) and Nashville.
Despite a .303 batting average for the Memphis Redbirds in 2017, the Cardinals finally released Martini in November of 2017. The Athletics signed him two months later and shipped him off to Nashville, where Martini did what he had always done, hit. He batted .308 in 73 games before the opportunity at last knocked. An injury to Matt Joyce prompted his first call to the show.
Since then, Martini has become a central piece of the Oakland Athletics improbable run for a post-season berth and possibly an AL West divisional championship. Batting mostly in the leadoff spot, Martini enters play Wednesday hitting .260 and reaching base at a .364 clip.
On Tuesday night in a “must-win” game for the Athletics, Martini’s 9th inning ground rule double broke up a 3-3 tie with the team they’re trying to catch, the Houston Astros. The victory moved Oakland within a game and a half of the division-leading defending World Series champions.
It also provided a major emotional lift to Martini, suffering from the worst slump of his nascent big league career – two for 20 – at the time.
A’s manager Bob Melvin said Martini had the emotional maturity to handle those down streaks and still deliver at big moments such as Tuesday’s. “We’ve seen him go through some tough periods offensively and stay with it, and then come out with a good game,” he told MLB.com’s Jane Lee.
After seven years in the minors, Martini told Ross he’s having fun finally realizing his big league dream. “I’m thankful for this opportunity,” he said.
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Imagine how thankful he’d be if a season that began with a free agent assignment in Nashville ended batting leadoff in a post-season game for the Oakland Athletics.