Russell Martin, back in postseason, says Blue Jays 'feel like championship team'
It's been nearly a decade since Russell Martin first appeared in a postseason game, and the frequency with which he's returned to October baseball suggests it is no coincidence.
In his first season with the Toronto Blue Jays at 32, Martin can look back with significant perspective on his seven trips to the postseason with three clubs and realize what wasn't right.
He sees himself at 23, as a rookie catcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2006, and realizes an odd mix of raw youngsters such as himself, Andre Ethier and Matt Kemp and fading veterans such as Nomar Garciaparra, Jeff Kent and Greg Maddux was far from ideal.
He looks back on his two seasons with the New York Yankees and sees a club so old that, at 29, Martin and Robinson Cano were the youngest everyday players in a lineup featuring four players 36 or older.
And when Martin examines his two seasons with the Pittsburgh Pirates, where he played a significant role in ending the franchise's two-decade playoff drought, he understands the team was up against the vagaries of the wild-card game and perhaps not deep enough to challenge the mighty St. Louis Cardinals.
Now, however, he glances around the Blue Jays clubhouse and sees something altogether different — a 93-win team loaded with peak performers, a fearsome offense and nothing stopping them from significant October achievements.
The quest begins Thursday afternoon, when the Blue Jays play host to the Texas Rangers in Game 1 of the American League Division Series at Rogers Centre.
"This one feels different," Martin told Paste BN Sports. "This team feels like a championship team. I've been fortunate to be on some good teams. I've played in quite a few playoff games.
"The toughest part is yet to come, but I think we're up for the challenge."
Certainly, the cast of All-Star thumpers in the major leagues' most imposing lineup — from Josh Donaldson to Edwin Encarnacion to Jose Bautista and newly acquired Troy Tulowitzki — inspires Martin's optimism. Pick a category — runs (891), home runs (232), slugging (.457) — and the Blue Jays lapped the major league field.
While the acquisition of ace David Price kick-started the Blue Jays' run to the AL East title, Martin does not hesitate to list Marcus Stroman, who made a stunning recovery from reconstructive knee surgery, alongside Price as the club's one-two playoff punch.
"I like what we have," Martin says.
Yet here's the thing: The Blue Jays are nearly as ebullient in what they have with Martin, who's about to embark on his eighth postseason run.
The tangibles certainly were there: Martin earned his fourth All-Star selection in 2015, buoyed by a .796 on-base-plus-slugging percentage in the first half, and finished with 23 home runs. His 12.3 runs added by count, a pitch-framing metric developed by Baseball Prospectus, tied for sixth in the major leagues.
Yet there was another skill the club prized almost as much: being Russell Martin.
Perhaps it's the way he shrugs off vicious foul tips or wild pitches his body absorbs, not in an attention-drawing fashion but rather with the stoicism of a Buckingham Palace guard.
"He brought that toughness and that confidence — something that we really needed around here," Blue Jays manager John Gibbons says. "The first two months of the season, I don't think I saw a catcher get beat up the way he did. He gets beat up behind the plate but shows no signs of it. You'll see guys falling all over the ground, real dramatic. There's none of that drama to him."
It's also in the way he quietly brought together a clubhouse of disparate pasts, baseball and otherwise. Martin was the big free agent get — the Blue Jays thought enough of his success to give him a five-year, $82 million contract.
Donaldson, whom Gibbons says brought mettle to the club as well, albeit in a more vocal package, arrived via trade with the Oakland Athletics and produced an MVP season. Sluggers Encarnacion and Bautista — at 34 and 32 the only regulars Martin's age or older — were already entrenched.
It was Martin, Bautista says, who brought the club together from the get-go in spring training, quietly organizing team-wide get-togethers and urging players to get to know each other away from the field.
That certainly didn't matter as much as Donaldson's 41 home runs or Price's 9-1 record down the stretch. It also wasn't insignificant.
"It was a dynamic we did not have," says Bautista, who hit 40 homers and drove in 114 runs this season. "He's always promoting getting together, bonding as a team, certain activities on and off the field together as a group. It builds team value. We've never taken that approach into it.
"I think that helped this group because of all the different personalities. I have been here for a while. So has Edwin. Donaldson came from one team. Russell from another. I'm sure everybody would have some sort of conflict if they brought their old team's way into it."
Says Gibbons: "The last couple years, the clubhouse has been a little fractured. Not extreme, but you had your different groups and all that. This year, it's just, man, they're all in it together. That's been a huge difference."
Better yet for the fans, it's a native son at the heart of it. Martin was born in Quebec, grew up in Montreal and — although the Expos still existed when he was a youth — reveled in the Blue Jays' consecutive World Series titles in 1992 and '93.
Nothing in franchise history may top Joe Carter's Series-ending homer in 1993. Martin, however, had a native moment that was rather special himself last month.
In the rubber game of a series with the Yankees, Martin came to the plate with his club nursing a 1-0 lead in the seventh inning. A win, and the Blue Jays win the series and seize a 3½-game lead. A loss, and the Yankees climb within 1½ games.
The Rogers Centre crowd, 48,056 strong on this night, roared throughout much of the series, perhaps never louder than when Martin slammed a three-run homer off Andrew Bailey.
On paper, it provided a 4-0 lead. In the big picture, it salted away the division: New York never got any closer to Toronto again.
Or anything but. Martin's sustained success — and October appearances — have come with too much frequency to ascribe them to metaphysical forces."The whole place went nuts," Martin recalls. "As I'm rounding the bases, I'm just ecstatic. Especially in that spot — not trying to hit a home run, man. Just trying to put the barrel of the bat on the ball. Just one of those magical moments."
"Everywhere he goes," Gibbons says, "his team wins. You don't take that lightly."
Lacques reported from Baltimore.
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