MINNEAPOLIS – Austin Martin is making the most of his chance.
Martin, recalled from Triple-A St. Paul after the Twins’ Trade Deadline sell-off, has established himself as the team’s primary left fielder over the past seven weeks. On Monday night, he showed why.
The speedster contributed in all phases of the game, highlighted by an acrobatic catch in foul territory in the eighth inning of the Twins’ 7-0 win against the Yankees at Target Field.
With two men on and two outs, Cody Bellinger hit a popup down the left-field line. Martin raced after it, and even as the ball tailed toward the stands, Martin kept pace. He tumbled over the wall headfirst. As he helped himself up, it was still unclear whether he had caught it, until Martin casually opened his glove to reveal that he’d secured the out.
“I just needed to catch my breath,” Martin said. “That wall is concrete. So I just needed to catch my breath a little bit. I got up and I looked around and nobody was moving. I just assumed everybody saw me catch the ball. I wasn’t trying to deke anybody or anything like that. I just looked up and nobody was doing anything, so I just showed the ball and then everybody reacted.”
In an odd bit of procedural minutia, a Yankees challenge to the play was upheld, but it did not change the result. New York challenged the call, and upon review, it was determined that a fan had touched the ball while it was still in the field of play. As a result, Bellinger was ruled out due to spectator interference rather than simply the catch, and the Yankees retained their challenge.
The play was just one of several contributions from Martin. In the third inning, he beat out a potential double-play ball as a run scored. In the seventh, he slapped a three-run double that broke the game open, then stole third base and scored when Luke Keaschall singled through a drawn-in infield.
“He's playing like the player I always knew he could be,” said teammate Simeon Woods Richardson, who has known Martin since the two were in Double-A together in the Blue Jays’ organization. “Now the world gets to see it. Hitting at the plate, that's nothing new to me. I've seen it before everybody saw it. Him making great plays in the outfield, and the infield, I've seen it. I've seen it more than most people. It's not new to me.”