Red Sox Sign Chris Martin, Strike Zone Artist

Move over, Jacob deGrom; this was the best free-agent deal of last week:

Right-handed reliever Chris Martin and the Boston Red Sox are in agreement on a two-year, $17.5 million contract, pending physical, sources familiar with the deal tell ESPN. Martin, 36, was magnificent for the Dodgers after a deadline trade and parlayed it into a multiyear deal.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) December 2, 2022

I kid, but only sort of! Obviously, deGrom is a phenomenal pitcher. The Rangers did well to court him. And this isn’t me advocating for the importance of “surplus value” or whatever vague finance jargon gets thrown around these days. I just really like Chris Martin, and I also think the Red Sox got a ton of bang for their buck for signing him.

There are also things not to like about Martin, at least on the surface. If people objected to a 35-year-old first baseman getting three years, imagine their discomfort at the sight of a 36-year-old reliever getting two years. His fastball velocity is pedestrian by modern standards, his pitch movement data isn’t eye-popping, and he doesn’t throw from an unorthodox angle to compensate. In 2021, Martin’s strikeout rate plummeted to 18%, and it’s worrisome to think he could return to such a dramatic low. When the risks are lined up like this, a two-year pact comes off as unappealing.

That said, it’s not a bad idea to ignore everything just mentioned, because Martin has freakishly good command. As Jon Becker pointed out, look who owns the best strikeout-to-walk ratio among pitchers with 200 or more innings pitched since 2018:

It’s Martin by a wide, wide margin. A pitcher’s command isn’t impervious to age, but it declines at a rate much slower than his stuff, and we can reasonably expect Martin to keep hitting his spots even as he nears 40. If we treat 2021 as an outlier and discard it (and there’s good reason to, as I’ll touch on later), he’s also struck out well over a batter per inning. That’s been possible because Martin throws not just strikes, but quality strikes. He may not have a standout offering, but when every pitch in his arsenal is well-located, who’s to say that’s a weakness?

Martin possessed all those qualities. Then he joined the Dodgers. Originally on the Cubs to begin 2022, a deadline trade sent him to Los Angeles. There, he began work on refining his repertoire, and the changes soon became evident. In an article about post-deadline pitch mix changes, Ben Clemens noted that Martin started throwing his four-seam fastball more often as a Dodger. As it’s arguably his best pitch due to how well he spots it, the decision made sense. But Martin didn’t just opt for more fastballs and call it a day. Instead, he completely overhauled how he approaches left- and right-handed hitters. That’s not something you see often.

Before, Martin didn’t have specific strategy against either hitter. He more or less lead with his four-seamer, then mixed in a plethora of secondary pitches whose usage rates fluctuated by month. It worked for Martin, and he never had a strong incentive to change his ways. But, presumably, the Dodgers thought he could benefit from a simplified repertoire with an explicit blueprint. Consider the changes in pitch usage against lefties before and after his being traded:

With a lefty at the plate, Martin made the cutter his primary pitch — not the four-seamer, as one might initially think. The cutter established the count, and the four-seamer and splitter served as his “out” pitches. Also, he shunned any other offering, save for a single sinker that I increasingly think is a misread. Maybe the Dodgers said, “Hey, these are your three best options against lefties, and they’re all you need,” and Martin agreed. Here’s some of his pitching in action:

All season long, that’s where Martin consistently located his cutters: up. That particular one is gorgeous. You couldn’t come up with a better strike if you tried.

The following pitch is a fastball that misses way out of the zone, so we’ll skip it. With a ball and a strike apiece, Martin goes back to the cutter and produces another masterpiece:

Amazing. What do you do as a hitter? If you take it, it’s a strike, and one so pinpoint that you can’t even air your grievances at the umpire. If you swing at it, you’re probably whiffing (as Jake Cronenworth did) or grounding out to third base. But really, the pièce de résistance is Martin’s fourth and final pitch:

This time, it’s a splitter that craters into the dirt as it reaches home plate. It’s rare for Cronenworth to look so lost, but Martin executed three of his four pitches to perfection. There’s not much he could have done. Not every sequence from Martin last season looked that flawless, and he did get away with a couple of dangerous pitches. But his already great command improved as the season went on, and that it happened alongside a repertoire adjustment doesn’t seem like a coincidence. The Red Sox might have their own ideas, but to me, this version of Martin is the best one yet.

We better check out how he altered his approach against right-handers, too:

Fastballs up, cutters away, sinkers in: This fastball trifecta made up nearly 90% of the pitches he threw against righties as a Dodger. Individual weaknesses seemed to determine the sequencing. Versus hitters vulnerable to high four-seamers like Joey Bart and Pete Alonso, he often threw four-seamer after four-seamer after four-seamer until he picked up a strikeout or a pop fly. Versus more versatile hitters like Manny Machado and Starling Marte, he evenly mixed in all three fastballs, then switched to the four-seamer or slider with two strikes. As with lefties, Martin trimmed the excess within his repertoire and developed a clear course of action. No pitcher would unintentionally offer five consecutive four-seamers to Brian Anderson! (He struck out swinging.)

Because I promised earlier, I’m happy to report that Martin’s 2021 is likely a weird, flukey, and ignorable year. Using all publicly available means of measuring or observing stuff and command, I found no evidence of a decline in either. The bottom line is that relievers are volatile, and that even a full season of relief work is a puny sample. We have far greater evidence of Martin of being an excellent reliever, and that track record is what we should trust.

It’s probably a track record the Red Sox considered as well. They had one of the weaker bullpens in baseball last season, and Martin should help turn it around. Boston now has a reliever that throws borderline strike after borderline strike, isn’t susceptible to home runs, and collects whiffs at an above-average rate. Those two years should be a blessing, not a burden.