How Edgar thinks he can help Mariners in new era of MLB hitting

Aug 30, 2024, 3:13 PM | Updated: 3:29 pm

Seattle Sports

Edgar Martinez put on a hitting clinic for nearly two decades during his time with the Seattle Mariners.

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During an 18-year Hall of Fame career in Seattle, the standout designated hitter had a ridiculous .312/.418/.515 slash line, won two American League batting titles and claimed five Silver Slugger awards.

The seven-time All-Star is putting on hitting clinics in the Pacific Northwest again, this time as a coach trying to turnaround the Mariners’ struggling offense. Martinez was announced as the new hitting coach last week after the team replaced Scott Servais with longtime former catcher Dan Wilson as manager and also parted ways with hitting coach Jarret DeHart.

Martinez, a seven-time All-Star whose name is on the award given yearly to the league’s best designated hitter, delved into the differences between hitting now and when he played, and how he hopes to help the M’s underperforming lineup, during a wide-ranging conversation with Seattle Sports’ Bump and Stacy on Friday.

‘It was a lot simpler’

Baseball has taken a dramatic shift towards analytics in the years since Martinez retired in 2004. Those metrics have drastically changed the way players approach hitting.

“I think the sabermetrics and some of the metrics that analysts look into have made the players kind of change the way they swing,” Martinez said. “There is more uppercut thinking about the launch angle and a lot of the hitters tend to be more to the pull side, and in the past it was pretty much using the whole field. But the rest is not a lot of changes. It’s just a lot more mechanics-driven than what it used to be.”

Co-host Michael Bumpus asked Martinez if those metrics were used at all when he played.

“We didn’t look into those numbers,” he said. “We only looked into average, walks, moving runners and runs scored. Other than that, we didn’t think about any other numbers, and I think today it’s very different in that sense. But when I played it was a lot simpler, and I think is was easier for us because we didn’t have to worry about any of those numbers that everybody’s giving so much emphasis. It was very simple in the past.”

Another difference Martinez notices is a stray away from the fundamentals of the game.

“I see sometimes that is a part of the game that is not enough (of an) emphasis now, but in the past it was very prevalent,” he said. “Everybody wanted to move the runner and everybody wanted to work on getting runs in. (There) was a lot of thought into that and we talked a lot about it, but that is different from today.

“I think that we don’t use hit-and-run anymore, the bunt is very rare. Those things have changed a lot.”

How Edgar hopes to help M’s offense

Martinez was known as a pure hitter that used all parts of the field during his decorated career in the majors. He reached 30 home runs only once (37 in 2000) but cleared 30 doubles nine times, including five campaigns with at least 40. His 514 doubles rank first all-time in Mariners history and his 2,247 hits and .312 batting average trail only Ichiro Suzuki.

FanGraphs batted-ball data covers just the final three seasons of Martinez’s career (2002-04) but still shows his balanced hitting approach. During those three seasons, he pulled the ball 35.1% of the time, hit it up the middle 30.9% and went to the opposite field 31.7%. There are only nine qualified hitters in baseball to post at least 30% in all three categories this season, according to FanGraphs.

He hopes that approach can rub off the current Mariners.

“Hopefully just kind of to buy in on trying to use the whole field and not be one-dimensional to the pull side, and just work really hard in situational hitting, and try to be the best version of yourself,” Martinez said of what he wants to accomplish. “If you’re a gap-to-gap hitter, you’ll try to be the best version of a gap-to-gap hitter and know who you are. I think that’s helped me in the past. I didn’t try to hit home runs, they just happened. … Hopefully they can buy in to that.”

Listen to the full conversation with Seattle Mariners hitting coach Edgar Martinez at this link or in the audio player near the top of this story. Tune in to Bump and Stacy weekdays from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. or find the podcast on the Seattle Sports app.