Angel Martinez delivered another clutch performance in Wednesday night’s 3-2 extra-inning win over the Detroit Tigers, and Stephen Vogt made sure everyone understood exactly how he views the young outfielder at this point in the season.
Vogt was asked about Martinez’s continued hot streak after the game, and his response was as glowing as it has been all week.
“I mean, Angel, like we talked about, is off to an unbelievable start. He’s a really smart, good baseball player, and he got a mistake up out over, and I told him, ‘go hit a double’, and he had a triple instead. I feel like when you’re the away team, you got to score 2, and our guys did,” Vogt said.
The triple Vogt referenced was the go-ahead hit in the tenth inning, a ball that scored Brayan Rocchio from second base and broke a 1-1 tie that had held since Patrick Bailey’s groundout in the ninth. Jose Ramirez followed with a double to score Martinez and give Cleveland the two-run cushion that ultimately held up.
The full season numbers after Wednesday’s game continue to impress. Martinez is now hitting .263 across 156 at-bats with nine home runs, 26 RBI, eight stolen bases, a .305 on-base percentage and an .805 OPS.
Every benchmark he set in his first two professional seasons has been shattered in the first two months of this one. Nine home runs through 51 games after hitting 11 in all of 2025 across 139 games. Eight stolen bases. A triple in the tenth inning of a road extra-inning game that his team needed desperately.
Vogt keeps calling his growth exponential and his start unbelievable. And the American League just named him Player of the Week. At some point, we have to come to terms with the fact that Martinez has arrived, and this is the norm now.
That point arrived a while ago for Angel Martinez, and Wednesday night’s clutch triple in extra innings was just the latest reminder.
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