McAdam: In early going, J.D. Martinez looks like his old self

Across the disastrous 2020 season, it sometimes seemed that J.D. Martinez had more excuses than big moments.

He claimed baseball's early July re-start caught him off-guard and the brief Summer Camp wasn't long enough for him to get reacclimated. He bemoaned the inability to review his at-bats during games, stripping him of the chance to analyze and adjust his swing. And finally, he dismissed the legitimacy of the 60-game season, suggesting that the results and individual statistics -- including, conveniently, his own -- couldn't be trusted.

Four games into the 2021 season is too soon to determine if Martinez's points were all valid ones. More time is needed to see where this year is headed, and whether 2020 was, indeed, an aberration.

But based on -- ahem -- a very small sample size, Martinez may have been onto something, at least insofar as his own performance goes.

Through four games, the veteran slugger more closely resembles the hitter who terrorized the American League in his first two seasons with the Red Sox, and nothing at all like the guy who barely registered offensively last year with an anemic .389 slugging percentage.

In the three-game sweep by the Baltimore Orioles over the weekend, Martinez was the only member of the Red Sox lineup to do any damage, collecting six hits and supplying the team's homer. And just in case the skeptics were set to dismiss that production as a byproduct of the O's pitching staff, Martinez kept on bashing when the Tampa Bay Rays showed up to Fenway Monday.



In his first inning, he hit an absolutely missile off Michael Wacha that never got any higher than a dozen feet off the ground and somehow traveled all the way to the center field wall, about 380 feet away. Measured at 108 mph off the bat, the ball seemed ready to bore through the wall altogether, but instead, caromed directly back to Kevin Kiermaier, who turned and fired the ball back to the infield to hold Martinez to what may well go down as the longest single of the season.

Two walks followed and those were not as inconsequential as they may seem. A year ago, his walk rate was 9.3 percent, the lowest figure of his career since 2015. It reflected the indecision Martinez sometimes felt at the plate, and the lack of control he felt about the strike zone.

Finally, in the eighth, with the Red Sox comfortably ahead, Martinez drove a ball to right and saw it clang off the right field foul pole, serving as a reminder of the power he possesses to the opposite field. That three-run shot, his second homer in four games, provided the final statement on a night when the Sox took the lead in the second and kept adding on.

For the team as a whole, the win felt like a relief, an opportunity to exhale.

For Martinez, that feeling first started to take hold over the weekend.

"I feel a lot better,'' said Martinez, asked to compare how he feels now to last year. "I feel a lot more confident with myself and the work I put in. I'm more mentally prepared, I would say.''

Martinez is likely not the only one feeling better about his rejuvenation. He's signed for another year at $19.75 million after this, and though he has an opt-out, it's not like today's marketplace is going to create a stampede for a hitter nearing his mid-30s. Especially if that hitter suddenly looks to have slowed considerably. The Red Sox have enough dead money on their payroll already — they don't need another highly-paid underachiever on board for 2022.

And make no mistake -- Martinez is critically important to this year's edition of the Red Sox. When they were last really good, Martinez anchored the middle of the lineup, providing righthanded thump. He could hit good pitching and bad, and he was strong enough to hit the ball out almost anywhere.

In some sense, his importance has only grown. Mookie Betts, Jackie Bradley Jr. and Andrew Benintendi are all gone. It's unclear how much the Sox are going to get out of some new players such as Hunter Renfroe and Franchy Cordero. There are questions up and down the lineup, from a super-utility player now being asked to hit leadoff, to Paul Bunyon-like power hitter at the bottom prone to strikeouts.

At a time when the game is trending away from everyday designated hitters and older players in general, the Sox' hopes are inexorably tied to Martinez.

That's why the good start has erased some early-season fears -- for Martinez, yes, but also, the team. And if the in-game iPad seems like a security blanket, well, it's serving its purpose.

''It's definitely cooled my anxiety,'' Martinez said of the video use, "being able to try something out and seeing, 'OK, that looks better' and being able to make those adjustments at-bat to at-bat.''

The tinkering with the swing continues. Adjustments will be made on a regular basis. But the whispers -- Has he lost it? - have been quieted, for now.

Ever the student, Martinez treats his swing like a bit of complicated machinery. If four games can be an indication, it again looks like a well-oiled machine.

"I'm still generating the power,'' said Martinez. "It's just a matter of lining things up and getting them to sequence the right away again.''

On Monday night, with a win finally to their credit, they could relax. And so could their DH.