The free agent market’s best designated hitter this side of Shohei Ohtani has found a new home.
After a potent return-to-form last season, J.D. Martinez signed a 1-year, $12-million deal with the New York Mets on Thursday, pending a physical, league sources said. MLB Network insider Jon Heyman was first to report the news.
With the addition, the Mets were rewarded for their patience, identifying the slugger as a target early in the offseason before waiting for his price to drop. Martinez provides a power threat behind Pete Alonso in the Mets’ lineup that New York has longed for. The Mets entered spring training with Mark Vientos, an unproven young player, as their DH, but Martinez’s price point became too good to pass up.
While Alonso spent the bulk of his games batting cleanup last season, the Mets’ No. 5 batters produced .652 OPS, better only than the Detroit Tigers (.639) and Oakland A’s (.620). Also, the Mets’ DHs generated a feeble .700 OPS; only five teams received worse production from the position.
Martinez, 36, was the most accomplished hitter on the free agent market. He doesn’t have Ohtani’s all-around game, or his most recent accomplishments, but he does have three Silver Sluggers and six All-Star selections, including the past three seasons in a row. Since his offensive breakout in 2014, Martinez has played 10 years with a .908 OPS (which is just slightly higher than the career OPS marks of Mike Schmidt, Ken Griffey Jr., and Gary Sheffield).
Age and nagging injuries — especially in his back — have all but eliminated Martinez’s ability to play the field, but he’s continued to hit into his mid-30s. Last year with the Los Angeles Dodgers he had an .893 OPS, which would have been 11th-best in baseball if he had enough at-bats to qualify. His OPS+ (134) and wRC+ (135) last season were higher than any of this winter’s free agents other than Ohtani. The Athletic’s Big Board ranked him the 24th-best player and 11th-best position player on the market.
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The Dodgers, who signed Martinez to a one-year, $10-million contract last winter, declined to give him a qualifying offer this offseason, meaning his signing comes without the loss of a draft pick.
The upside with Martinez is obvious. Although his 31.1-percent strikeout rate was the highest of his career — and his 7.1-percent walk rate the lowest — he continued to mash last season. His hard-hit percentage, barrel percentage and average exit velocity were in the 98th percentile of all big league hitters, according to Statcast.
Martinez won the 2018 World Series with the Red Sox. (Nathan Ray Seebeck / USA TODAY)
The downside is that Martinez played only 113 games last year, and the past two years he’s played only 112 innings in the field. He missed time last season with lower back tightness and a groin injury, which hounded him for weeks before he finally went on the I.L. in late August. When he returned, he was as good as ever, hitting eight home runs in his final 21 games of the season. He homered again in the Division Series. The season as a whole was a massive bounce back from 2022, when Martinez’s nagging back clearly wore on him in the second half and he slugged just .400 after the All-Star break.
At the time, such a disappointing finish at age 35 seemed to suggest Martinez might be at the end of his elite peak. Largely unheralded as a 20th-round draft pick, Martinez was released by the Houston Astros in March of 2014. At the time, he had an 88 OPS+ through three years of underwhelming part-time duty in the big leagues.
In a matter of days, he latched on with the Tigers and almost immediately proved himself as an offensive force. An early devotee of the launch angle revolution, Martinez had a .912 OPS his first year with the Tigers, then made his first All-Star team the next year. He was traded to the Arizona Diamondbacks in July 2017 and delivered an epic second half with 29 home runs and a 1.107 OPS in 62 games.
In 2018, Martinez signed a five-year deal with the Boston Red Sox and proved to be the final piece of a championship roster. He made the All-Star team four out of five years in Boston before proving himself in Los Angeles, reaching the free-agent market once again as a meaningful offensive upgrade.
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(Top photo: Joe Camporeale / USA Today)
