J. D. Martinez

“Rodney Linares really stuck his neck out in Greenville to play me, because they had their prospects, guys who they had invested money in.”

“I wish I could go up every single time and have guys on base.”

“If a pitcher goes up there and he's throwing a ball and it's a breaking ball down and away or a fastball up and in, a perfect pitcher's pitch, and you're able to just foul it off and stay alive in the at-bat, just keep grinding, keep working through the at-bat and hoping for that mistake that he's going to make. And if he doesn't, then you walk.”

“To me grinding out a good at-bat is pretty much fighting. And it's not trying to do too much with pitches, just finding a way to spoil a good pitcher's pitches, really.”

“I grew up in Miami watching baseball down there, so you could see it from one extreme to the next. It was like, 'Well, this is what baseball is about.'”

“I love my story. I wouldn't change it. It gives it character. It's never been on a silver spoon.”

“You have to go up there, and it's you vs. the pitcher. No one's there to help you. That's how I go about it.”

“Whoever's hitting in front of you or behind you is going to determine how you get pitched, but there's nothing you can do.”

“I think that's one of the things you start learning from being hot and playing every day at the beginning, you know. The league, they made their adjustments and their change to you, the way they pitch you, the way they attack you, and just learning and learning from that and making the adjustments the very next at bat or the very next pitch.”

“Any time you go into the playoff game everyone's adrenaline is high and tensions are going, stuff like that.”

“I think my failures in Houston is what made me who I am. I think it's given me that drive, that drive to keep working, because you never know what can happen type deal.”

“I love my country. I love this country.”

“That's one thing I learned from watching great hitters hit. A lot of hitters, they're ready to hit from pitch one.”

“I started playing ball when I was 4 years old.”

“The last thing I wanted to do was get buried in Triple-A behind prospects.”

“Sometimes what we see, what's going on in front of us, isn't really what's happening.”

“I'm usually rough during Spring Training. My Spring Training numbers aren't very good, but I never expect them to be.”

“Starting in middle school, I would play on two or three baseball teams at the same time, because that's just how things worked in south Florida. I would practice six or seven days each week. I honestly don't know how my parents did it, but my dad always found a way to make it to each and every game.”

“People are always asking if I was mad at Houston. Honestly, I'm not. The truth of the matter is that when I was there, I didn't perform and they actually did me a favor by cutting me loose. They could have really held me there, not let me leave, bury me in Triple-A, put me behind some prospects and I would never even play.”

“Let's say I have a new respect for guys who come off the bench every day. That's not easy to do.”