TORONTO -- Pitch by pitch, Guardians center fielder Angel Martínez willed along his plate appearance in the third inning on Friday. Facing Max Scherzer, the 24-year-old fouled off seven consecutive offerings to open the sequence, before running the count full.
Scherzer came back with a four-seam fastball over the heart of the plate on the 11th pitch of the battle. Martínez sent it halfway up the bleachers in right-center field at Rogers Centre.
Martínez belted a pair of home runs off Scherzer on Friday, including that two-run shot in the third inning, to help send the Guardians to an 8-6 win over the Blue Jays in the opener of a three-game series. It marked Martínez’s first career multi-homer game, after he also hit a two-run shot in the first inning.
“That 11-pitch homer might have been one of the best at-bats I've seen,” manager Stephen Vogt said, “just to work the count, work the pitches, foul off, fight for the next pitch and then get one you can handle.”
Martínez drew the start in center field on Friday while Steven Kwan was given a day off. He capped off a five-run Guardians first inning when he hit a two-run homer off a Scherzer four-seamer that went a Statcast-projected 388 feet and had a 103.0 mph exit velocity. He topped that effort his next time at the plate.
Martínez fell behind Scherzer 0-2 in the third inning; he fouled off a curveball and a changeup, the latter of which he hit 110 mph and hooked just foul. Facing the likely future Hall of Famer, it could have been easy for Martínez to become overwhelmed. Instead, he showed his own poise.
“Just thinking about the next pitch,” Martínez said. “Stay simple, stay to the middle and don’t try to do too much.”
Martínez fouled off Scherzer’s next five pitches, including a pair of curveballs in the dirt. Scherzer had to come in the zone after Martínez laid off his ensuing three pitches -- a curveball in the dirt, a changeup inside and a slider up -- and Martínez made him pay.
Through a zoomed-out lens, this also was our latest evidence of what has gone right for the Guardians’ offense in the early going this season: Martínez, especially from the left side of the plate.
The switch-hitting Martínez struggled from the left side in 2025, when he hit .197 with six home runs and a .545 OPS over 315 plate appearances. He entered Friday hitting .295 with two home runs and an .890 OPS as a left-handed hitter in ’26.
“He spent an entire offseason just working on hitting fastballs left-handed,” Guardians hitting coach Grant Fink said recently. “We saw it right away in Spring Training. He came out and got his contact point a little more out front. He's a little earlier in this load, and it's really impacting both fastballs and offspeed a lot harder.
“Spring Training has carried on to the year, and it's been really cool to see.”
Martínez’s underlying numbers in the early going have pointed to his continued maturation at the plate. He had a 43.8 percent chase rate as a left-handed hitter in 2025. He entered Friday with a 39.3 percent rate so far this season, though of course in a much smaller sample size.
From both sides of the plate, Martínez has been making loud contact. Entering Friday, his hard-hit rate was 40.4 percent. It was 29.3 percent in 2025.
“There's still a little bit of chasing,” Fink said. “He's working on that. But overall, he's looking to impact the baseball. His plan and execution at the plate is a lot better. So even if the chase does kind of creep in there, it's in better counts. It's not in every count. It's not in every pitch.”
“It's more strategic of when he's taking a shot, where sometimes he'll go out of the zone. But he can hit the ball out of his zone hard, too.”
By returning a similar cast of hitters from the 2025 team, which collectively struggled, the Guardians banked on guys taking a step forward in their development. It’s still only April, but Martínez has been one of the most encouraging storylines of the young season for Cleveland.
With the veteran approach he showed at the plate Friday, Martínez is maintaining a mature mindset.
“Honestly, I'm just trying to go day by day,” Martínez said. “I always know that I'm capable of doing what I'm doing. So just go day by day, stay focused and just try to be as consistent as I can.”