‘Just Dingers.’ J.D. Martinez gives Dodgers a lift in Tuesday’s win over Mets
J.D. Martinez crushed a 438-foot, two-run home run to center field in the first inning and lined a 378-foot solo shot to right field in the third inning Tuesday night, and you could almost see the thought bubbles filling up above heads in the Dodgers dugout.
It was right here in Chavez Ravine six years ago that Martinez, then with the Arizona Diamondbacks, carved out a piece of baseball history, becoming only the 18th big leaguer to hit four homers in a game, each one against a different Dodgers pitcher.
Only two Dodgers have ever hit four homers in a game, Gil Hodges in 1950 against the Boston Braves and Shawn Green in 2002 against the Milwaukee Brewers. The odds of Martinez becoming the first player to hit four homers in a game twice were astronomical, but he was on a good pace.
“I wish, I wish,” Martinez said with a laugh, when asked if his two early bombs triggered flashbacks of his four-homer game on Sept. 4, 2017. “But there’s a big difference between two and four. You don’t really start thinking about it until you get to three.”
Clayton Kershaw was outstanding over seven scoreless innings as the Dodgers beat the visiting New York Mets 5-0 to return to .500 on Tuesday night.
Martinez did not reach three. But he hit an infield single in the fifth inning and capped a two-run eighth with a two-out, RBI single to right-center field to pace the offense in a 5-0 victory over the New York Mets in which left-hander Clayton Kershaw notched his 200th victory.
“I remember that game — the first at-bat he struck out, and he went four for four with a strikeout and four homers,” Dodgers left fielder David Peralta, a 2017 teammate of Martinez in Arizona, said, recalling Martinez’s four-homer game. “But I told him tonight, ‘That’s the J.D. that I know.’ ”
The J.D. the Dodgers had for the first three weeks of this season wasn’t exactly an imposter, but it didn’t look like the guy the Dodgers hoped they’d get when they signed the 13-year veteran to a one-year, $10-million deal to be their everyday designated hitter in February.
Martinez entered Tuesday night’s game with a .231 average, .724 OPS, one homer and nine RBIs in 17 games, including a four-for-27 skid in his previous seven games that shaved 58 points off his average and 181 points off his OPS.
“Inconsistent,” Martinez said, when asked to assess his season so far. “That’s pretty much the one word I can summarize it with. I’m not usually that inconsistent. I’ve taken pride my whole career in being a complete hitter, a consistent hitter.
“Anyone who knows me knows that I’m not going to settle for [inconsistent]. I’m going to bust my butt and do everything I’ve got to do to be the player I can be.”
Martinez got to Dodger Stadium early Tuesday afternoon and began “grinding on some stuff” with the team’s hitting coaches, “really trying to feel my connection on the front side, and it worked.”
Max Scherzer’s short Dodgers career ended when he couldn’t pitch in a game that ended the season for the defending World Series champs.
Martinez followed Freddie Freeman’s first-inning single with a 10-pitch at-bat against Mets right-hander Tylor Megill, fouling off four full-count pitches before clobbering an 83-mph slider well beyond the center-field wall for a 2-0 lead.
“I fell behind in the count and was able to see a couple pitches,” said Martinez, who had never faced Megill before. “I started feeling more comfortable as the at-bat went on.”
That lengthy first-inning duel played a part in Martinez’s third-inning homer, which came on a 95.5-mph Megill fastball that Martinez shot the other way for a 3-0 lead.
“It definitely makes you feel more comfortable,” Martinez said of the 10-pitch at-bat out of the chute. “You got to see all of his pitches, you see what his plan is for getting you out. If you get a long at-bat, you definitely want it early like that.”
Martinez’s four-hit, four-RBI night helped ease the loss of leadoff man Mookie Betts, who missed Tuesday night’s game because of paternity leave, and No. 3 hitter Will Smith, who is sidelined by concussion-like symptoms.
“This is what we want from J.D., just to be a cog and to help us win ballgames,” manager Dave Roberts said. “With Mookie not in the lineup, it was good to see Max [Muncy, three walks and a single] and J.D pick up the slack offensively. We’ve got a lot of good players, but to see J.D. have the night he did was certainly special.”
Peralta sensed Martinez was due for a breakout game.
“He’s always working his ass off, and it’s just a matter of time until it’s gonna click,” Peralta said. “With him, you never panic. You see today, everything he was hitting was hard. That’s who he is.
“Baseball is hard. We always wish we could hit all the time, but it’s not gonna happen. But you always make adjustments. And today, all the hard work he’s been putting in in the cage paid off. That’s why he’s J.D. — ‘Just Dingers.’ ”
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