MLB: 8 hitters poised to bounce back from ugly 2020
By Tre LyDay
6. J.D. Martinez
The player most affected by the lack of in-game video was J.D. Martinez. He spends a ton of time watching video of his at-bats whether that be in batting practice or during the games. He’s an elite hitter because he’s so good at making adjustments.
Believe it or not, Martinez was simply just missing pitches he doesn’t normally miss. His quality of contact wasn’t far off from his normal production. His barrel rate remained steady at 11 percent, he wasn’t striking out at an abnormal rate and his sweet spot percentage remained steady at 40 percent.
His exit velocity saw a slight decrease and combine that with an increase in launch angle then you get a lot of fly balls that are landing in outfielder’s gloves and not the second deck. From 2015-2019 Martinez posted a wOBA of .372 or higher in each season, but that dropped all the way down to .285 in 2020 which can be attributed to hitting more catchable fly balls.
If a hitter of Martinez’s caliber is missing fastballs the way he did in 2020, then there has to be something off and it’s generally a mechanical issue. In this case it was one that he wasn’t able to fix in-game with the lack of video.
It’s unlikely he’ll return to the run value of 35 he posted against 4-seam fastballs in 2018, but the -3 he posted in 2020 isn’t anywhere close to the kind of hitter he actually is.