Weekly Statistical Spotlight: J.D. Martinez

One of the few offensive players that have been consistent for the New York Mets this season is veteran J.D. Martinez. This week’s Statistical Spotlight features the first-year Met and examines what has gone into his success.

J.D.’s home run in the 8th inning against the Diamondbacks on May 30 corralled the troops to a victory, and he followed that up by hitting another one in the sixth inning of the Mets 10-9 victory against the Diamondbacks on May 31. The designated hitter slashed .208/.348/.500 with a commendable .848 OPS for games the week of May 25 to May 31. He had two home runs with a double and went 5 for 21 over this span. Let’s take a deeper dive into J.D.’s plate approach last week.

Below are  J.D.’s hits and strikeout locations against the pitches he saw. “FC” stands for cutter, “FF” is fastball, “SI” is sinker, “SL” is slider, and “ST” is sweeper. From the graph, we can tell that J.D. capitalized on sinkers. Both of his home runs came off sinkers that were in the zone. He was also able to connect on hanging sliders up in the zone for a double and a single.  

What can also be seen from the graph is J.D.’s struggle to protect the outside part of the plate. J.D. tallied five strikeouts against a variety of pitches, all on the outer half of the plate. On the year, Martinez has a strikeout rate of 32.3%, striking out nearly once every three at-bats. His highest whiff rate is against the breaking ball at a 38.8%.       

Seeing Martinez build on his success thus far not only would do wonders for the struggling Mets, but also continue to increase his potential value when it comes to a trade. He’s doing a great job at covering the inside of the plate. Look for J.D. to adjust his plate approach to cover outside pitches and squeeze the zone.  If he can accomplish this, pitchers will be forced to throw him inside into his sweet spot. If he can command much more of the strike zone, look for Martinez to put up similar numbers to his 2023 campaign (.271/.321/.572 with 33 home runs and 103 RBIs) and raise his current WAR of 0.4.

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