BRADENTON, Fla. -- Nobody knows exactly where Mason Martin is going to play in 2022. He’s the Pirates’ top prospect at first base and made the jump to Class AAA at the end of last season after being named Altoona’s Most Valuable Player. Despite that, the club opted not to add him to the roster, meaning he is Rule 5 eligible.
Despite having barely any depth at first base at the major-league level outside of Yoshi Tsutsugo, the Pirates opted to not select Martin’s contract this winter. If you’ve seen his Baseball Reference or FanGraphs page, you know why.
He strikes out. A lot.
In Altoona last year, he fanned in 34.2% of his plate appearances, or 161 times overall. Now he did have a pretty good 8.1% walk rate, and with his raw power, he still slashed an above average .242/.318/.481. It wasn’t the prettiest .800 OPS season, but it still was one (well, .799, but that doesn’t roll off the tongue as well).
But there’s no way around it. Martin is almost certainly going to need to cut down on his strikeouts if he wants to be a successful major-leaguer.
“That’s obviously something I want to be better at this year, always being a tough out,” Martin said at Pirate City. “I think that’s something I’m going to pride myself on, because I trust my ability in any count, and I trust my hands with two strikes and what my eyes see.”
Martin is a pretty straight forward player. He isn’t going to give you extra value in base running or defensive versatility. He’s a first baseman and he needs to hit if he wants to make that jump to the majors. The odds are pretty good he’ll get promoted by someone, someday. If he does, he’ll be an anomaly.
In his career thus far, Martin has struck out in 31.8% of his plate appearances. Let’s put that in some historical perspective.
Dating back to 2006 (as far back as FanGraphs’ minor-league leaderboard goes), 4,519 players have had 1,000 career plate appearances in the minors. That’s two solid years of at-bats for an everyday player, so that filters out most of the organizational depth players who were just around to fill out a Class A roster. Everyone here was at least a semi-legit prospect at one time.
Of those 4,519 players, 140 of them had a strikeout rate of 30% or higher before their major-league debut.
Of those 140, just 13 have appeared as a hitter in a major-league game. Organized by number of major-league plate appearances and minor-league strikeout rate, they are:
Joey Gallo, 2,401 PA, 34.7 K%
Domingo Santana, 1,919 PA, 30.1 K%
Jazz Chisholm Jr., 569 PA, 30.1 K%
Carlos Peguero, 319 PA, 30.7 K%
DJ Peters, 240 PA, 30.7 K%
Travis Demeritte, 219 PA, 30.6 K%
Greg Halman, 121 PA, 33 K%
Dusty Coleman, 76 PA, 31.8 K%
Monte Harrison, 62 PA, 30.8 K%
Jonathan Van Every, 52 PA, 31.5 K%
Connor Wong, 14 PA, 30.1 K%
David Washington, 6 PA, 31.1 K%
Kyle Skipworth, 4 PA, 31 K%
It’s not a particularly inspiring list. Gallo is an All-Star despite his strikeout rate, but that’s also because he’s one of the best power hitters in the sport, a Gold Glover and led the American League with 111 walks. Martin has the pop, but he walks only about half as often as Gallo and doesn’t have elite defense to fall back on when he’s in a slump. Chisholm had a pretty good rookie season with the Marlins and should be part of their future plans. Santana was an under-appreciated outfielder who played parts of seven seasons before going to Japan.
After them, the rest of the list is filled with various players within arms length of replacement level. Right now, the odds of having a strikeout rate as high as Martin and turning out to be a productive big-leaguer is about 1-in-1500. Even among the high strikeout demographic, only about 2% of them did anything of note in the majors.
The strikeouts need to go down. Everyone knows it. It’s why he spent a lot of time this offseason working with occlusion goggles, white cuts off his vision shortly after the pitch is thrown. The point of the drill is to force the hitter to recognize a pitch’s type, flight path and if they should swing at it sooner.
Martin felt like he improved in that area this offseason.
“There’s no thinking involved,” Martin explained. “You’re just getting that feel for seeing the ball for [a shorter] amount of time.”
Watching Martin in camp, it looks like that swing has evolved a little to go along with him adjusting to seeing the ball less. Here he is in early July from last year, when he was in one of his best grooves of the year:
Mason Martin bringing the early fireworks show. pic.twitter.com/UQwLBJ1bkw
— Young Bucs (@YoungBucsPIT) July 4, 2021
And here’s some video I took at Pirate City. This drill was with the pitching machine about halfway between the mound and home plate, so there are a couple uncomfortable hacks here. Seeing some of the uncomfortable ones is important, especially when compared to the last cut, which left the yard:
The leg kick has been cut down and it looks like the hands are getting through the zone quicker. He's always had a pretty compact swing, but it looks like there's less hand movement. Just get back and hit.
The hands are probably the key here. To speculate, if this was a two-strike swing, it would probably help him get the bat to the ball more, and probably still with a high exit velocity. If he does that, then Martin further establishes himself as one of the Pirates’ most dangerous hitting prospects.
Assuming, of course, he stays with the Pirates.
Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, one of the other 29 teams. Who knows where Martin will play in 2022? He can’t control it, so he’s trying to block it out.
“The only thing I can focus on is showing up to the park every day with a great attitude,” Martin said. “... I don’t know what this year is going to be like, but I prided myself on putting in the work every single day and try to get better. Getting myself ready. I’m ready to have a big year.”
If he’s improved his pitch recognition and cuts down on his strikeouts, then Martin could be that 1-in-1000 hitter. Until then, he's got to prove he can beat the odds.
