Daily Red Sox Links: Liking J.D. Martinez before it was cool

Before I was an Over the Monster contributor and, in fact, nearly a decade ago at this point, I was a summer intern/beat writer for the Albany Times Union, a local newspaper in Albany, New York. My beat for the Times Union was covering the Tri-City ValleyCats. If you are not a fervent New York-Penn League aficionado, then you may not know that the ValleyCats are the Single-A short season affiliate of the Houston Astros.

While covering the 2009 ValleyCats, I wrote about, spoke with and evaluated the play of a number of minor leaguers. Most of them had just been drafted earlier that summer and would never make the MLB level. But the optimism of that place was palpable. Every player could…