For Your Consideration: Édgar Martínez
The Baseball Writers’ Association of America is casting its ballots in the next month for the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum’s Class of 2018.
La Vida Baseball will weigh in with the pros, the cons and the betcha-didn’t-knows of the Latino candidates. There are 33 players eligible, including Omar Vizquel, Édgar Martínez, Vladimir Guerrero, Sammy Sosa, Johan Santana, Manny Ramírez, Liván Hernández, Carlos Lee, Carlos Zambrano and Andruw Jones, who we include because he hails from Curacao.
Yesterday we looked at Vizquel. In this edition, Martínez.
.312/.418/.515 — 68.3 WAR — 56.0 JAWS
By Efraín Ruiz Pantin
Édgar Martínez was born in New York City, but was raised in Dorado, Puerto Rico, by his grandparents and relatives starting at age 2. After watching Roberto Clemente on TV during the 1971 World Series and asking his aunt about him, Martínez took up baseball. A late starter and late bloomer, he ended up defining the position of DH.
Martínez played 18 seasons with the Seattle Mariners, winning two batting titles and five Silver Slugger Awards. A seven-time All-Star, his specialty was making opposing pitchers work before he got on base. He led the American League in OBP three times, but more impressive is that he hit .300 in 11 seasons and surpassed a .400 OBP 12 times. He was so good and consistent that in 2004, Major League Baseball honored Martínez by renaming the American League DH award after him.
The case for Martínez
One of the best hitters of all-time. That simple. The right-handed Martínez is one of six players in history with at least 8,000 plate appearances who hit .312/.418/.515 or better. The other five? Babe Ruth, Rogers Hornsby, Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx and Ted Williams. To quote Jay Jaffe — inventor of JAWS, or the Jaffe WAR Score metric created to compare players to those enshrined in Cooperstown — Martínez could flat-out rake.
If that isn’t enough, know that before Big Papi, there was Edgar. A good third baseman in the beginning, Martínez was the first pure hitter to record more than two-thirds of his plate appearances as a DH. And he made the position his own. His .418 OBP ranks 21st all-time, just ahead of Cardinals Hall of Famer Stan Musial. His .933 OPS is good for 32nd, tied with Albert Belle and ahead of Álex Rodríguez, Hank Aaron, Frank Robinson and Ken Griffey Jr., to mention a few legends.
But don’t take it from us. Just ask Pedro Martínez and Randy Johnson — two Hall of Fame pitchers — and another one with the credentials to get into Cooperstown in the near future, Mariano Rivera.
“Edgar Martínez, hands down, the best hitter I’ve ever seen,” Johnson told The Seattle Times when he was elected to the HOF in 2015.
“The toughest guy I faced,” Pedro told MLB.com when he was elected to the HOF, also in 2015. “Edgar was a guy that had the ability to foul off pitches, and it pissed me off because I couldn’t get the guy out.”
“The only guy that I didn’t want to face, in a tough situation, was Edgar Martínez,” Rivera told Charlie Rose in 2013. “It didn’t matter how I threw the ball. I couldn’t get him out. Oh, my God, he had more than my number. He had my breakfast, lunch and dinner.”
Martínez devoured Rivera — the all-time leader in saves — batting 11-for-19 with three doubles, two home runs, three walks and four strikeouts in 23 plate appearances. In metrics-speak, that’s a .579/.652/1.053 line.
The case against Martínez
The purists will say that Martínez had 72 percent of his plate appearances as a DH and never won the MVP award. He also got a late start to his career and didn’t play full-time until age 27, resulting in lower career stats relative to his peers and other third basemen in the Hall of Fame. While Martínez retired with 514 doubles, he totaled only 2,247 hits and 309 home runs.
Plus, the clock is ticking. While Martínez made a significant jump in the results last year — improving to 58.6 percent — this is his ninth and second-to-last opportunity to be voted in by the BBWAA. Based on last year’s 442 ballots, Martínez will need to gain approximately 73 votes to reach the 75 percent threshold for induction.
What the metrics say
Despite spending the majority of his career at DH, Martínez still rates among the best. His 68.3 WAR is 11th all-time among third basemen. His 56.0 JAWS — which averages career WAR with a player’s 7-year peak WAR — is better than the 55.2 average for HOF third sackers.
The biggest metric against Martínez is the stigma of being a DH. That simple.
Greatest moment
Game 5 of the 1995 ALDS between Seattle and the Yankees, still considered an iconic moment in the Mariners’ annals. Until that year, the Mariners had enjoyed two winning seasons in their history (1991 and 1993) and their future in town looked uncertain. In fact, as late as August, the team was 13 games out of first place before catching the Angels and winning a one-game playoff to clinch the division. While that was happening, voters rejected a one-tenth of a percent sales tax increase to fund a new ballpark.
Under that backdrop, Martínez came to bat in the bottom of the 11th inning against Jack McDowell. The Mariners were trailing 5-4, but had Joey Cora on third and Ken Griffey Jr. on first with no outs. Martínez took the first pitch for a strike. He stroked the second one past third all the way to the left-field wall. Running at full speed, Griffey beat the throw home, sending the Mariners to the ALCS and the whole Northwest into ecstasy.
Known ever since as “The Double,” Martínez’s hit may have saved baseball in Seattle. Instead of moving, the team garnered support for public funds and got a new stadium, known today as Safeco Field. Martínez’s double is immortalized in a mural that’s part of the stadium’s art collection. And he remains with the team as a hitting coach.
Fact you probably don’t know
Martínez liked to arrive early at the ballpark for extra batting practice. Like most hitters, he would take warm-up swings with a 2-pound metal doughnut on the bat. But unlike most hitters, he would keep the doughnut on inside the batting cage. According to his teammates, Martínez always made contact without the ball hitting the doughnut.
“Hitting a baseball isn’t easy, so you do everything you can to stay sharp,” Martinez told Sports Illustrated in 2000. “That’s why I use the doughnut. It adds weight to the bat and it makes swinging [in batting practice] more of a challenge.”
That feat alone should get Martínez into somebody’s Hall of Fame.
Featured Image: Stephen Dunn / Getty Images Sport
Inset Image: Jonathan Daniel / Getty Images Sport