An interesting piece in the Globe today. It seems that baseball's two best hitters are feeding off each other. JD Martinez is probably the greatest student of hitting since Teddy Ballgame and Mookie is studying JD. Martinez feels he's just getting warmed up. If that's true, this pair is going to have a season that they'll be talking about for years to come.
"Mookie Betts (left) and J.D. Martinez are a potent 1-2 punch in the Red Sox lineup.
By Julian BenbowGLOBE STAFF
MAY 21, 2018
When J.D. Martinez first started bringing his big bag of toys into the clubhouse — whether it was in Houston, Detroit, or Arizona — his teammates didn’t know what to make of it.
At a glance, it appeared to be a gym bag full of Phys Ed equipment: a red heavy-duty dodgeball, Frisbees for disc golf, and almost everything else anyone would need for a family field day. It looked like he had raided a Play It Again Sports, but everything in the bag was a tool he used to refine his swing.
“A lot of guys used to laugh,” Martinez said.
Red Sox outfielder Andrew Benintendi first noticed the bag on the road when Martinez was taking swings in the batting cage.
“He does some interesting stuff with all that,” Benintendi said. “It works for him, so I’m not going to ask any questions.”
But the first time Mookie Betts noticed it, he wanted to know more.
“I didn’t know you could use all those toys to hit with, really,” Betts said. “So, I mean, it’s kind of neat how you can use those certain things to get certain feels and then put it all into a swing.”
It didn’t take long for Betts to start digging through the bag to see what tricks he could pull out.
“I haven’t really used 90 percent of them,” he said. “I used a couple of them. It was pretty cool to see what you can do with household things.”
The Frisbees caught Betts’s eye. When he threw one, he realized how closely the motion resembled the one he used to swing a bat.
“You just throw it, and it kind of simulates the swing,” he said.
For all the people that may have laughed at his toy bag, Martinez said the way Betts has taken to it has been special. At different points in his career, Martinez would talk hitting with some teammates, but few of them would actually be able to apply it at the plate. With Betts, there’s a constant dialogue about hitting, and Martinez marvels at how often he sees Betts almost immediately implement it in games.
Whether it’s during batting practice, in the cage, in the clubhouse, or in the dugout, Betts and Martinez are constantly workshopping ideas for their swings with each other.
“I love having a guy to just bounce ideas off each other,” Martinez said. “I think we push each other really well. You always see it on the top step every time I come in and we’re just kind of laughing talking smack to each other and stuff like that.”
Martinez calls it “an obsession,” and it’s one they share.
“It’s kind of like having a kindred spirit,” Martinez said.
“I ask him and he tells me what he thinks, what to do,” Betts said. “He’s had so much success, it’d be silly for me not to try and do it at least. And he hasn’t steered me wrong yet, so I kind of trust in him.”
Through the Sox’ first 47 games, the results are undeniable.
Betts and Martinez are hammering the ball in a way that the franchise has seldom seen. With 15 home runs apiece, they are tied for the major league lead. It’s the first time in club history that the Sox have had two players with that many homers through the first 50 games. The last team to have two players with 15 or more through 47 games was the 2001 Colorado Rockies with Larry Walker and Todd Helton.
If anything, Martinez said, it’s a testament to two hitting junkies consumed by the nearly limitless ability to fine-tune their swings.
“I talk to Mookie about it,” Martinez said. “I think he went a little bit where he didn’t hit a home run and then freaking out. He was like, ‘Dude, I got no pop anymore.’ And I’m like, ‘Bro, relax.’
“They come in bunches. All of a sudden, you won’t hit one for two, three weeks and then you hit three or four in a week. Especially him. He’ll come around and hit three in a game.”
Betts already has a pair of three-homer games this season. Red Sox manager Alex Cora said watching all the swings Betts takes not only before but during games explains the power surge after Betts hit 24 homers last season. After going without a homer in his first six games this season, Martinez has made it look routine. He’s gone deep in six of his past eight games, and 10 of his past 18.
Cora said there’s an element of iron sharpening iron with the two hitters.
“I think the communication and the way they go about their craft, I’ve been saying it all along,” Cora said. “Especially towards the end of spring training, there was a lot of baseball talk in the clubhouse, in the dugout, and it keeps going.
“You see them, not only those two but the rest of the team talking about hitting, talking about situations, taking advantage of what the game is giving you. When you start doing that, you start winning a bunch of games and it becomes fun.
“That’s a lot of work they put in for them to put themselves in position to drive the ball, put up good at-bats. People just see the results from 7 until 10, but what they have to do to put themselves in position to be successful, it’s a lot of work.”
Even if the bag Martinez brings to the clubhouse makes it look like fun and games."
