Archive for Victor Martinez

Carlos Santana has only played forty major league games, but he’s already topped one significant leaderboard with his play. Consider this little nugget: Last year, he put up the best OPS by a switch-hitting catcher debuting under the age of 25 with 30 or more games. In fewer words, he was the best rookie switch-hitting catcher of all time last year. Of course, that assertion comes with some significant caveats, but after further inspection his supernatural feat holds up as historically great.

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Bottom of the second. No score. Indians vs. White Sox. John Danks on the mound, Jhonny Peralta on first. Victor Martinez at the dish. Danks checks the runner, delivers the first pitch to Martinez. CRACK! Victor launches the ball deep to the leftield line… it… is… outta’ here! Indians fans cheered as the Tribe took a 2-0 lead in a game they would go onto win 9-3. Believe it or not, this was the first home run of the season for Victor.

Yes, Victor no longer belongs to the 200+ PA/0 HR club. Its other members: Joey Gathright, Chone Figgins, Omar Vizquel, Brendan Ryan, Miguel Cairo, Augie Ojeda, and Juan Pierre will have to say goodbye to their colleague.

Sure, Victor’s season has been hindered by injuries but, still, 57 games and neary a dinger until last night? From Victor Martinez? The guy might not be Barry Bonds out there, but over the last four years he was an extremely solid bet to OPS around .860, with 20+ home runs and 35+ doubles. Including last night, Victor is hitting just .274/.328/.344, with 1 home run and 12 doubles.

According to his gamelogs, this is by far the most games he has ever gone without a home run. From April 16, 2005-May 27, 2005, he went homerless in a string of 32 games. This almost doubled that amount. As Dave mentioned last week, his replacement Kelly Shoppach is leading all AL catchers in home runs, so the Indians are still getting production from that department, just not where they expected. The Tribe won’t make the playoffs this year but a hearty congratulations goes out to V-Mart on his first home run of the year. I hope he got to keep the ball.

Part of my daily routine involves checking the league leaders page here and sorting by various stats. In doing so this morning I found that there are currently four players, with enough PA to qualify for the leaderboard, who are yet to hit a home run.

Juan Pierre, Julio Lugo, and Jason Bartlett are not necessarily surprising members of the club but, as the title of this post suggests, the fourth member is Victor Martinez. While not a power threat of the Albert Pujols or Ryan Howard ilk, he has hit 16-25 home runs each of the last four years with a steadily increasing OPS of .851-.879 in that span.

Through 54 games this year he has 0 home runs, a .333 SLG, and a .665 OPS. Granted he is injured right now but Indians fans might want to hope the lower numbers are a result of poor health rather than a shift in performance. It’s still too early and his updated projection may not have changed too drastically however something is definitely up.

His flyball percentage of 38.2% last year currently sits at 29.2%. He also has a BABIP of .314 so it is not as if he has been extremely unlucky. His walk and strikeout rates have curiously decreased as well. Plate discipline stats look very similar across the board with the exception of pitches swung at outside the zone. He’s swinging at 29.83% of those OOZ pitches—up from 23.76% last year—yet making essentially the same 76% of contact.

Victor’s first home run in 2007 came in his fifth game; he homered in his second game in 2006; in both his eighth and ninth games in 2005; and his second game in 2004. The 54 homerless games this year is a little over four times the aggregate total preceding his initial dinger in the last four years. With his injury, V-Mart may miss 6-8 weeks, meaning it could be the middle of August before he hits his first home run… if that.