J.D. Martinez’s Mets debut is likely to be pushed back at least another week.
On Tuesday ahead of the Mets’ 3-1 win over the Pirates, team president David Stearns gave his first update on the designated hitter, explaining Martinez is not expected to be ready for its West Coast trip to Los Angeles and San Francisco.
“It’s unlikely on the trip. My expectation is shortly thereafter,” Stearns said.
Added manager Carlos Mendoza: “He swung the bat yesterday. Scheduled to continue to swing the bat today. Cage, tee, toss, things like that. But the one thing I’ll say, where he’s at and us going to the West Coast [Wednesday] after the game, it’s very unlikely that he will join the team in this upcoming trip.”
This is the second time Martinez, 36, has been said to be near the end of building up his at-bats in the minors.
He was expected to join the Mets on their trip to Cincinnati and Atlanta and be ready to face the Braves on April 8 after spending 10 days off the roster in a minor league stint as an expedited span of spring training. However, he was held back after experiencing lower-back pain and overall body soreness.
Instead, the late spring training addition received a cortisone shot on April 9 after it proved to be helpful while with the Dodgers last season in an effort to get ahead of the discomfort.
“We talked to his representation plenty and I think J.D. did a very nice job of keeping himself in shape during the downtime before he signed,” Stearns said of how aware he was of Martinez’s readiness when signing him. “I think as he’s gotten going, he kind of ran into the same level of back stiffness that plagued him over a couple different points of his career and was pretty confident that the way the Dodgers treated it last year really helped him throughout the year. So, we’ve adopted to treat it the same way.”
Stearns added he doesn’t believe Martinez needs to show anything in particular to join the team, rather it’s based on when his body feels ready.
Martinez agreed to a one-year contract worth $12 million just before spring training wrapped up after posting a .271 batting average and .893 OPS last season. The Mets’ offense had expected to reap the benefits of his bat since the start of the month.
“I don’t know,” Stearns said when asked if he is surprised it has taken this long. “I think we didn’t have a defined time frame. I certainly think had he had this back stiffness, he would have been here already. So, the back stiffness probably delayed this a little bit.”