McAdam: Two thoughts on the final off-day of the Red Sox season

Fifty-four games down. Six games to go. One home series remaining.

Meanwhile, two nagging thoughts:

1 - The J.D. Martinez mystery continues 

Which scenario would have seemed more improbable at the start of this season? A team choosing to walk a hitter in extra-innings in order to pitch to J.D. Martinez? Or, the notion that Martinez stands a chance of finishing the season with a sub-.200 batting average?

The first has already happened. The Yankees, after falling behind Xander Bogaerts 2-and-0 in the 11th inning on Friday, elected to intentionally walk Bogaerts with first base open, filling the bases for Martinez. Worse, the strategy worked when Martinez fanned -- for the fourth time in the game.

The second may yet take place. In the final week of the season, Martinez is hitting .205, dipped to .199 after Friday's loss and hasn't been over .205 since Sept. 10.

It's well past time to ascribe Martinez's season-long struggles to his inability to reference his at-bats via in-game video, though undoubtedly, that's been a contributing factor. Still, everyone is playing under the same rules and conditions. If proven run producers like Mike Trout (1.005), Jose Abreu (1.032) and Freddie Freeman (1.097) can learn to do without, why can't Martinez?

Mostly, it would seem, Martinez's dramatic drop-off stems from a combination of poor mechanics, which in turn have led to diminished confidence.

"He's fallen into some bad habits,'' acknowledged hitting coach Tim Hyers. "He just jumps off his back side and creates some length in his swing and he's just late to fastballs. He's tried a few things, a lot of them have failed. He's trying to be shorter. Finishing off this last week, (a goal) is to just trying to kill some of these bad habits and not try to do too much.

"He'll feel good in his work and he gets into the box and he just jumps off his backside and creates length. It's just a habit that has gone on and on. I know it seems like a player of his caliber to make those changes should be a lot easier. But to be honest, that's what we've been grinding on, is for him to shorten up and to not have that length in the back with his hands to catch up to a fastball. We've all seen that they've throw him a lot more fastballs and he hasn't been as productive to that and that's something he's struggled with.''



Unable to fix his swing, Martinez's confidence has plummeted, creating an additional issue.

"With the shortened season and how things add up (quickly),'' Hyers said, "Yes, it's going to knock his confidence down and he starts to doubt. He's a competitor and he's wanting to put his teams on his shoulders and produce and you try a little too much and I think that's a part of the mechanical flaw -- trying to hit it a little further, trying to get the big home run. You come out of your mechanics, you're not relaxed, you're trying to do too much. He gets big (with his swing), misses a few fastballs he should hit and it kind of rolls downhill after that.''

The assumption is that Martinez will figure all of this out over the winter and come back next spring with his swing back in place. His career has been one marked by consistency -- before this year, he had posted an OPS of .908 or better in five of the last six seasons.

But if Martinez somehow can't approximate his usual production at age 33, the Red Sox are on the hook for nearly $39 million over the next two seasons. And DH or no DH in the National League, his disastrous season makes him all but un-tradeable this winter.

2 - Pivetta set for Red Sox debut

It says everything about the alarming shortage of starting pitching at the major league level that the anticipation for Nick Pivetta's first start for the Red Sox Tuesday night at Fenway has been the object of anticipation for the last few weeks.

This is, after all, a guy who sports a career ERA of 5.50 over portions of the last four seasons.

Still, the Red Sox thought there was something worth salvaging when Pivetta was one of two pieces they acquired when they dealt Brandon Workman and Heath Hembree to the Phillies last month.

And to be sure, there are some positive attributes to Pivetta. He's got a prototypical power-pitcher's frame (6-5, 215), a fastball that he can throw in the mid-90s and a curve that, at least occasionally, has been a swing-and-miss pitch for him.

To be clear, Pivetta, for whatever raw talents he possesses, is no one's idea of a front-of-the-rotation starter. He profiles more closely as a No. 4 or No. 5 option. But for an organization so bereft of internal options, he would be welcomed.

If nothing else, the Sox will need depth at the start of next year. Chris Sale almost certainly won't be ready to start next season and given the understandable caution the organization has shown in building Eduardo Rodriguez back up following a year in which he essentially didn't throw in a competitive environment after mid-March, he may not be available either. At the very least, his workload will be carefully monitored for 2021.

In fact -- and this assumes the Sox will exercise the option on Martin Perez -- the team could very well go into spring training with the exact rotation it has had the last two weeks: Perez, Nathan Eovaldi, Tanner Houck and....?

The Sox put a lot of work into remaking Pivetta at the alternate training site -- ironing out some mechanical flaws and aligning his pitch mix. Tuesday represents the first opportunity to judge how successful their work has been. Sunday, the final day of the season, will present another.

The bar is not set terribly high here. If Pivetta shows himself capable of giving the Red Sox a chance to stay in games, he can take initial steps toward staking a claim to a rotation spot next spring and send the team into the offseason feeling at least a little better about its starting pitching inventory.