BRADENTON, Fla. -- Watching Mason Martin hit homers off the Skyliner roller coaster beyond the right field wall at the Altoona Curve’s home stadium at PNG Field, you would almost think he hates roller coasters.
Well, he actually does. But had to ride that coaster anyway when he lost a bet to his roommate, Ji-Hwan Bae. In July, Martin hadn’t stolen a base. Bae hadn’t homered. If Martin swiped a bag first, Bae bought dinner. If Bae homered, the roller coaster.
The next game, Bae got a hold of a slider at the ankles.
“I’m like, ‘You gotta be kidding me, man,’” Martin joked at LECOM Park on Tuesday. “He fooled me.”
The moral of the story: Bet on Martin’s power, not his speed.
It’s real power, though, as you would expect from someone who does his offseason training with his bodybuilder dad. Martin went deep 25 times across Class AA Altoona and AAA Indianapolis in 2021, being named the Curve’s Most Valuable Player. He’s widely considered to be the Pirates’ top first base prospect, and 17th overall in the organization, per MLB Pipeline.
His future with the Pirates could hang in the balance this week. The deadline to add Rule 5 eligible players, like Martin, to the roster is Friday. If he is not added, the Pirates would run a serious risk of losing him to another team.
Martin is trying to ignore that looming decision, taking a “what's the point in stressing about it when you can't control it” approach.
“I've played my season, and at the end of the day, I left everything out there,” Martin said. “Really made it a focus to try to get better every day.”
There are two main areas of concern with Martin’s game, both of which he’s working on in this camp. One is his defense, with him focusing on picking throws in the dirt to try to help his fellow infielders.
The other, and perhaps more important, are whiffs and strikeouts. Martin struck out in over one-third of his plate appearances in 2021 and cooled off towards the end of the season. Martin felt the book got out on him and teams started throwing more junk that he would chase.
“I don't want to be a guy that is all or nothing, essentially,” Martin said. “I want to be a guy that contributes a lot of runs to the team and drives in a lot of runs, but not at the cost of inconsistency of helping the team the win.”
With home runs and strikeouts driving the way the game is played today, Martin could be a three true outcome hitter, slugging and walking enough to still have good results.
“I’m not really concerned about his strikeout rate, to be honest,” Curve manager Miguel Pérez told our Jarrod Prugar towards the end of the season. “I’m in a privileged spot [coaching] third base. You can see a lot of stuff with the lefties. He’s close. He’s really close.”
But as Martin said, those types of hitters tend to be streakier. He tried to be more focused on just taking his walks as the season progressed, and getting better at pitch identification could go a long way towards that.
Martin is in Bradenton taking part in a camp for position player prospects. There, he has been doing a new drill about five times a week. It’s normal batting practice, but the hitter wears goggles that flash a white screen shortly after the pitch is thrown, blocking their sight.
It’s not that different than drunk goggles from divers’ education classes, and it can create uneven swings. Marauders first baseman Alexander Mojica can attest to that:
But it challenges hitters to identify pitches sooner and anticipate where the movement will take it.
“Say he releases the ball .25 milliseconds from [the mound], so about 20-30 feet, you’re gaining the information on a pitch, then it shuts off right there,” Martin explained. “You have to anticipate the rest of the pitch shape into the zone. You have to determine, ‘Is it a good pitch or is it not a good pitch? And if I’m going to swing at it, how do I anticipate the shape of the pitch to where my contact needs to be?’ It’s an eye drill, but it’s also a brain and hand-eye coordination drill. I’ve made some good improvements on it.”
Martin said he loves the drill and wishes he could take a pair of goggles back home with him, saying it’s helping him feel like he’s seeing the ball longer.
A more selective Martin who cuts down on the strikeouts could be a dangerous hitter. After being preached to control the controllables since coming to the Pirates, that’s one area he feels he can improve ahead of his likely major league debut in 2022.
"[I’m going to] try to come into spring training in the best shape I have been and get my swing ready to go."
