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I just interviewed J.D. Martinez, one of the best hitters in baseball.

Here's how he went from being cut by the worst team in baseball to becoming an All-Star:
In 2012, J.D. Martinez's coach told him what no athlete wants to hear: his career wasn't going anywhere. At the time, he was a mediocre hitter with an OPS of 0.650 and getting worse each year. (For reference, a good OPS is 0.800.)
He still remembers his coach’s words:

“You can make enough money to live off of, at least until you become too expensive to keep around. But that’s it. Unless you change something.”
A few weeks later, J.D. sprained his wrist.

This sparked the “change” J.D. so badly needed. While injured, he watched clips of Ryan Braun, a 5-time All-Star, and realized that his own swing looked nothing like Braun's.
J.D. swung down and through.

Braun swung up.

And after watching other leading hitters' swings, he realized that they all looked like Braun's, not his.
(Here are graphics of the two different swings. Credit to BaseballRebellion for the images.)

Swinging down (J.D.’s swing):
Swinging up (Braun’s swing):
So, J.D. hired two of the best hitting coaches in the world––the same coaches who taught Braun––so J.D. could get his own winning swing. He was risking his unremarkable––but paying––baseball career for a chance to be great.
The starting point seemed hopeless. The coaches told J.D. that he had one of the worst swings they had ever seen in a professional baseball player.
J.D. spent the whole off-season reinventing his swing, spending 5 hours a day, 7 days a week in a warehouse changing everything from his stance to his hand placement.
J.D.’s original downward motion and lower bat finish prioritized line drives, but to transform his swing to be more like Braun’s, J.D. would have to aim for getting the ball in the air. The goal of this is to get extra base-hits.
By the time spring training came around, J.D. had a swing that finished high, just like Braun.

But when J.D. went back to Houston, he wasn’t given a chance to show the Astros how he’d improved. He was cut from the team.
Eventually, J.D. signed on with the Tigers.

Unfortunately for the Astros, it was soon clear that they had made a mistake. J.D.’s swing had transformed and he was hitting with a 0.900 OPS.
Later, J.D.'s name was added to the baseball greats after he hit FOUR home runs in one game.
A few years after being released by the worst team in baseball, he signed a 100 million dollar contract with the Red Sox and had All-Star numbers.
A swing alone doesn’t make an All-Star, though. J.D. had to create a new routine that would turn him into one of the best.
Every day, J.D. heads to the park hours before the game starts to practice hitting and study the pitcher. By the time his teammates get there, J.D.’s already been practicing for hours.
He runs the pitch in his mind and visualizes the flight of the ball so that when he gets in the box, he's not seeing that fastball for the first time.
When J.D. steps up to the plate, he tenses all of his muscles, then relaxes them to release all that tension.

The ritual that calms him down, which allows him to focus.
After the game, when everyone else goes home, he analyzes game film. He watches videos of every pitch, strike, and foul, and tries to figure out what he did wrong.
J.D. saves those videos to the thousands of baseball videos already on his phone, which he showed me in our interview. He has videos of his swing, other players’ swings, pitchers, and anything else that he could analyze.
Once J.D. gets home and before goes to bed, he creates a plan for tomorrow so when he goes to the cage, he's not going in just to hit. He's going in with a purpose.

This allows him to make sure he’s getting better each and every day.
Here’s what he told me: “Everyone wants to get that mile right away. But if you just gain an inch every day, by end of it, you're gonna be on top.”
J.D. Martinez has one of the wildest success stories in baseball. He went from being a nobody on the Astros to being a hitter all of the best players are trying to copy. He became the new Braun.
J.D.’s path to success isn’t limited to baseball. Here are the three main takeaways you can apply to your life:
1. If you want to be the best, study the best, learn from the people who taught them, and do what they do.

2. Self-assessment is the only way to get better.

3. Success doesn’t come from one moment in time, it’s all of the hard work that comes before it.
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