There's an old adage in sports that sometimes the best deals are the ones you don't make.
The opposite would seem to be true when it comes to the Red Sox and J.D. Martinez.
The Sox talked to a number of teams at the Aug. 2 deadline, including the New York Mets and Los Angeles Dodgers. Word around the game was that the Sox had set the asking price quite high for any team inquiring about the veteran slugger. Reportedly, the Sox were seeking a top prospect and a young player off the major league roster in exchange for Martinez.
That was a high bar for two months of a 35-year-old DH, but perhaps the Sox were emboldened by what the Minnesota Twins got (promising starting pitcher Joe Ryan) for shipping Nelson Cruz at the 2021 deadline. Whatever the motivation, the Red Sox ultimately determined that no one had given them a satisfactory package in return and held onto Martinez for the rest of 2022.
As Annie Savoy remarked in Bull Durham: ''Big mistake.''
The Red Sox have since tumbled out of the wild card chase, although they managed to snap a four-game losing streak Friday night with a win over Tampa Bay. The Sox remain four games below .500 and well behind the third wild card spot with 36 games remaining. Holding onto Martinez (and Nathan Eovaldi, among other free agents-to-be) has been an unsuccessful strategy.
In the case of Martinez, however, it's been doubly frustrating. Not only has he failed to boost the Sox' playoff chances in the final third of the season, but he's wildly under-performed, period.
His alarming drop-off in terms of production actually began well before the deadline. But since Aug. 2 came and went and Martinez stayed put, his output has been minimal.
Martinez went into Friday night with a slash line of .276./.345/.429 for a .773 OPS. In and of themselves, those numbers aren't atrocious. But a closer look reveals that Martinez has been heading in the wrong direction for some time, and that his respectable numbers in the final days of August are more the product of a good start in April and May than a true snapshot of who he is currently as a hitter.
Since June 1, Martinez is slashing 221/293/.344 with four homers and 23 RBI in 66 games. His last homer came on July 10, some 119 at-bats and 33 games ago.
And since the trade deadline, Martinez's numbers are even more concerning: .217/.304/.275 in 23 games with no homers and six RBI. Before Friday, exactly one third of his at-bats since Aug. 2 ended in a strikeout.
Martinez hasn't looked this bad since the pandemic season of 2020, when he slashed .213/.291/./389 with only seven homers in 54 games. That season, Martinez was unable to utilize video in-game to analyze his swing from each at-bat. Once that ability was restored in 2021, he rebounded with .286/.349/.518.
But this season stands to qualify as his worst full-season performance since 2013, after which, the following spring, he was released by Houston. Since that year, excepting 2020, he's been an elite run producer.
Not this year, however.
It seems almost quaint that only months ago, the supposition was that the Red Sox would surely give him a qualifying offer after the season. If Martinez turned it down, it would provide the Red Sox with a compensatory draft pick; if he accepted, the Sox would be set at DH for another year, albeit at a price (somewhere around $19 million) that might be a bit higher than they would otherwise prefer to pay. Still, one year for a proven slugger seemed like a decent investment.
Now? The mere suggestion that they would consider that -- barring some miraculous turnaround in September that completely changes their mind -- is laughable. (The Sox could, of course, not tender him a qualifying offer and still re-sign him at a far lower base salary. That, too, seems like a significant stretch).
The warning signs were there. While Martinez's five-year, $110 million deal has generally been a sound undertaking on the part of the Sox -- in stark contrast to most nine-figure free agent deals -- Martinez has been, in small ways, regressing since he arrived. Even after tossing out 2020, his OPS has gone from 1.031 to .939 to .867 to .773. His OPS+ has followed a similar trajectory: 173, 139, 128, 115.
The Red Sox thought they could get one more productive season out of him. They guessed wrong.
And failing to pull the trigger at the deadline -- even if it was for a low-level prospect or two -- proved to be the biggest miscalculation of all.