Mets give potential target date for J.D. Martinez's debut
J.D. Martinez's Mets debut isn't imminent, but it's coming into focus.
Speaking on Tuesday, Mets manager Carlos Mendoza and president of baseball operations David Stearns both discussed the progress of Martinez, who recently resumed swinging after dealing with general body soreness and back stiffness.
Martinez received a cortisone shot last week for the back stiffness and has responded well.
According to Mendoza, he's set to hit again on Tuesday.
As far as when Martinez will join the big league club, that could happen relatively soon.
Both Mendoza and Stearns noted that Martinez joining the Mets during their upcoming six-game West Coast road trip to Los Angeles and San Francisco -- a trip that begins this Friday and ends on April 24 -- could be unlikely.
Mendoza highlighted the start of the Mets' next homestand, which begins on April 26 against the St. Louis Cardinals, as the likely target for Martinez -- something Stearns echoed.
"Certainly my expectation is shortly thereafter, if not on the trip," Stearns said.
When asked what the veteran needs to show the Mets either in terms of at-bats in minor league games or production, Stearns said that he doesn’t think Martinez “needs to show anything.”
“I think he just needs to get into a spot where he says, ‘I’m good to go and I feel good and I’m ready,’” Stearns said Tuesday. “I don’t know that necessarily from like an [evaluation] standpoint, I don’t know that we’re necessarily looking for anything.”
On the lingering back issue, Stearns said that Martinez “did a very nice job of keeping himself in shape during the downtime before he signed,” but as he has gotten going ramping up for the season he “kinda ran into the same level of back stiffness that plagued him over a couple different points of his career.”
“[Martinez] was pretty confident with the way the Dodgers treated it last year really helped him throughout the year,” he continued. “And so, we’ve opted to treat it the same way.”
Stearns said the club “didn’t have a defined time frame” for Martinez to join the big league roster after signing, but “had he not had this back stiffness he would have been here already, so the back stiffness probably delayed this a little bit.”
