If it was up to J.D. Martinez, the Detroit Tigers would have won. Maybe then, he wouldn’t have been traded.
“It wasn’t up to me,” Martinez said during All-Star Game festivities this past week. “It wasn’t my fault.”
At this time last year, Martinez was the first Tiger shuttled out of town in the team’s rebuilding process, traded to the Arizona Diamondbacks for three prospects. This weekend, he will return to Detroit, where he broke out in 2014.
“Detroit was a very special place for me,” he said. “I consider Detroit my home team. It’s the team where I grew up and the team where I became me and it was tough to leave, but life goes on and you keep going.