Rocco Baldelli. David Berding-USA TODAY Sports
J.P. Martinez comes with a fairly ironclad pitching resume. A former minor league pitcher who rose from a rehab pitching coach with Minnesota to the Twins’ assistant minor league pitching coordinator for three years, now getting an outside promotion to assistant pitching coach of the Giants.
But the Twins will tell you his skills go beyond the analytical world that is coaching pitching in an era of Rapsodos and Hawk-Eye.
When the Twins needed someone to run the entire operation at their alternate site this past season — not just the pitchers — they entrusted Martinez as the right people person for the gig.
“On top of a lot of the pitching-related stuff and the objective stuff, which he works with and understands very well, he’s really good with people,” Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said on a Zoom call Tuesday. “I think he’ll fit in with the [Giants] group. In the clubhouse, everyone will really appreciate him. You got a good guy.”
Baldelli and Martinez had worked together since the former was hired for the 2019 season and had to be often in direct contact with each other through 2020, the Twins needing to know whom next to call up.
How the camp was structured was the call of Martinez, who had to do it all.
“He’s excellent at what he does,” Baldelli said of the 38-year-old. “We think very highly of him; he would do so much for our young pitchers. I’m really proud of what our pitching guys have really done, what our front office has done, our player-development guys have done in Minnesota, and really built a situation that functions really well with people that function really well in helping our pitchers reach the next level in what they’re trying to do.
“J.P. was an enormous part of that for our group.”
The only known vacancy on the Giants’ coaching staff was created by assistant pitching coach Ethan Katz landing the White Sox pitching coach job, and it did not take long for the Giants to settle on Martinez as his replacement.
Martinez, a Louisiana native, is fluent in Spanish, which fills a need on the club’s pitching side of the organization. The Giants have said they considered women for the job, Gabe Kapler calling one woman he worked with in Philadelphia “really interesting.” Farhan Zaidi said there are women being considered for an opening as a mental-skills coach.
Martinez will be underneath pitching director Brian Bannister and pitching coach Andrew Bailey for a team that helped Kevin Gausman and Drew Smyly make plenty of money this offseason. (Though the pitching minds might be proudest of how the club navigated the bizarre circumstances of last season without too much injury.)
The Twins might be proudest of their staff’s 3.58 2020 ERA, the fourth best in baseball, thanks in part to new Giants reliever Matt Wisler.
“I was very sad to see J.P. go but also very, very pleased for him and for the Giants,” Baldelli said.