Major League Baseball

Can the Dodger who fixed J.D. Martinez's swing get the best out of him again?

Updated Mar. 8, 2023 7:00 p.m. ET

The first time Dodgers hitting coach Robert Van Scoyoc met J.D. Martinez, he was watching the scuffling Astros outfielder take batting practice at Angel Stadium.

That was 10 years ago, and Van Scoyoc was a private hitting instructor operating alongside coaching partner Craig Wallenbrock. They had worked with some Astros players, a group that included All-Star catcher Jason Castro, and were friends with a couple Houston coaches who invited them to the stadium and asked if any players caught their eye.

"I kind of spoke out of turn and said, ‘That guy,’" Van Scoyoc said. "J.D."

Van Scoyoc noticed the long, loose levers and explosiveness in Martinez’s swing.

"It kind of jumped off the page to me," Van Scoyoc continued, recognizing the tools that others didn’t.

Through his first three major-league seasons, Martinez hadn’t offered anything to suggest a particularly long major-league career ahead, combining for a .688 OPS with 24 homers over his first 252 games. By the end of the 2013 season, Martinez was ready to try anything. He admired the swing of Ryan Braun, and when he learned that Braun and some of his Astros teammates had worked with Wallenbrock, he asked Castro for a phone number and flew to California to meet the hitting coaches who would help save his career.

To that point, Wallenbrock estimated he had already worked privately with at least 30 big-league players. While some hitting gurus might flock to social media to flaunt their successes, Wallenbrock, 76, doesn’t use Facebook and has gone years between posts on Twitter. He grows his rolodex through word of mouth.

After an underwhelming college playing career followed by lengthier stints as a college coach and major-league scout, Wallenbrock began his work as a private instructor. That is how he met Van Scoyoc, who was among a group of high-school students benefiting from Wallenbrock’s hitting lessons in the early 2000s.

Van Scoyoc went on to play college baseball at Cuesta College, but his career ended there in part because of a lingering back issue. He figured coaching could be in his future, so he reached out to Wallenbrock about an apprenticeship.

Wallenbrock, who has had both of his hips replaced and his ankle fused, realized immediately what a physical help Van Scoyoc would be. But it was more than that. Van Scoyoc, 40 years Wallenbrock’s junior, was also more in tune with modern electronics and metrics. They eventually planted their base in Santa Clarita, California, transforming a warehouse into their hitting facility. Major-league hitters began to take notice.

Everything Wallenbrock did, he wanted to prove scientifically. His goal is not to coach players but to teach them how to coach themselves. He wants to cut them loose, to be made obsolete because they have such an understanding of their swing and how to self-correct. Wallenbrock and Van Scoyoc are staunch proponents of film study, making observations of what the best players do and understanding and defining those movements for their pupils’ benefit.

Dating back to the late-‘90s, Wallenbrock would lead hitting seminars explaining his methods. Those clinics grew. General managers and big-league hitting coaches and coordinators started to attend. At one of the early seminars, Wallenbrock made a statement: "I said, ‘Guys, we want line drives. We want the ball flushed up, but we’re going to miss. And your miss is better off being a pop fly than it is a ground ball."

With the help of Van Scoyoc and statistics from the Elias Sports Bureau, he explained how much higher batting averages were when the ball was hit in the air compared to on the ground. In some ways, Wallenbrock and Van Scoyoc sparked baseball’s launch-angle obsession, though they never used those terms with their hitters. Their focus is on getting to know them individually, then finding the best way to unlock efficiency in their swings and movements. It is not a one-size-fits-all approach.

"If you come for an overnight fix," Wallenbrock said, "get lost."

Martinez understood all of this. When he traveled to meet with Wallenbrock and Van Scoyoc, he was self-aware, completely prepared to start over and rebuild a swing that felt lost.

"I remember how hungry he came across," Van Scoyoc said. "He was in the cage the day after the season ended and was just incredibly driven."

That offseason, when Martinez was released by the Astros and signed with the Detroit Tigers, he stayed in touch with his new private tutors and continued to send them film. Van Scoyoc and Wallenbrock would analyze what they saw and get back to him.

When Martinez wanted one of the coaches to stay with him for a week, Wallenbrock was preparing for his first hip replacement. He suggested Martinez work with Van Scoyoc, who was a similar age.

"That’s kind of the point that we passed the baton," Wallenbrock said.

By lifting the ball more with his modernized swing, Martinez went on to mash 23 home runs in his first year with the Tigers in 2014. Then he launched 38 homers the following year in his first All-Star season. By 2018, he was signing a nine-figure deal with the Red Sox. Fast-forward to today, and only five players since 2014 have hit more home runs than Martinez.

Over that time, a close relationship formed with Van Scoyoc. They became best friends. As the years passed, Martinez’s stock rose while Van Scoyoc’s profile grew, though that was never the hitting coach’s intention.

"You want to work with a player, and the goal is for every guy to be as good as humanly possible, and you do everything you can to help them," Van Scoyoc said. "An unintended consequence of that is there’s some added benefit personally."

Van Scoyoc and Wallenbrock became hitting consultants for the Dodgers. More success stories followed, including Chris Taylor, whose career took off in Los Angeles with a swing change under their watchful eye. Van Scoyoc left for a brief stint to become a hitting strategist with the Diamondbacks before rejoining the Dodgers in 2019 as their hitting coach, a remarkable development for a 32-year-old who never played past junior college. He has remained in that position since, while Wallenbrock now operates his hitting clinic out of Pasadena, where he can occasionally work with pro players in the mornings before they go to Dodger Stadium.

Martinez will no longer have to travel far to be part of that group. The proximity of his hitting coaches played a role in his choosing the Dodgers this offseason, but the reasons — and reunions — went further.

Five years after winning a championship with Mookie Betts in Boston, the two will team back up playing for the Dodgers franchise they beat in the 2018 World Series. The former Red Sox teammates grew close in their first year together, taking extra batting practice within a few days of meeting. They stayed in close contact since, building a bond that Martinez said will exist for the rest of their lives.

"I loved his mindset," Betts told FOX Sports. "He’s a grinder. He wants to be great. That’s me. I want to be great. After like two weeks [in Boston], I feel like we became best friends."

Martinez had joked with Betts about rejoining him at some point. It started to feel like more of a possibility last year as rumors circulated about the Dodgers’ interest in Martinez before the trade deadline.

Now, it’s become a reality.

"He’s not just a baseball friend, he’s a genuine good friend of mine," Betts said. "When I see him, I don’t see baseball. I see, just, that’s my boy."

It’s a similar relationship Martinez has with Van Scoyoc, which the Dodgers hope will add to the 35-year-old’s comfort as he tries to recapture the form that made him one of the most feared power hitters in the game.

Five years ago, Martinez launched 43 home runs with a 173 OPS+ while leading the majors with 130 RBI. Last year, Martinez was still an above-average hitter, but the All-Star saw his hard-hit rate and exit velocity dip slightly while hitting 16 homers with a 117 OPS+. Still, he feasted on fastballs and demonstrated enough pop to convince the Dodgers to make him their designated hitter.

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"I think there’s a lot of levers we can pull, and we’ve already done a lot of that this offseason," Van Scoyoc said. "I still see enough hitting talent in there to get a lot of production."

That is what the Dodgers are counting on after letting Justin Turner go to Boston and signing Martinez to a one-year, $10 million deal in December. The move had to be mutually beneficial. The five-time All-Star wasn’t going to consider a rebuilding team. In Los Angeles, Martinez could compete for a World Series title surrounded by lifelong friends who brought him some of his greatest baseball joys and helped keep his career going into Year 13.

The fit jumped off the page.

"It was always in the back of my head that I could end up here," Martinez said. "I’m happy. This is where I wanted to be."

Rowan Kavner covers the Dodgers and NL West for FOX Sports. He previously was the Dodgers’ editor of digital and print publications. Follow him on Twitter at @RowanKavner.

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