Seattle Mariners Executive Vice President & General Manager of Baseball Operations Jerry Dipoto today announced that the Mariners have hired Lorena Martin, Ph.D., as the club's first-ever Director of High Performance.
Dr. Martin, who will begin her new role on November 1, will be responsible for coordinating all aspects of the Mariners physical and mental training approach of players and staff, including oversight of the entire organization's medical, strength and conditioning, nutrition and mental skills departments. Martin's specialty is integrating physiology, psychology, sports science, and statistical analysis to better assist athletes (and others) in the pursuit of maximum performance.
"We have spent nearly a year working on creating this position and structure as well as identifying the best person for this role," Dipoto said. "Lorena's background, skill set and previous experience make her a perfect match for what we envisioned.
"Major League Baseball has lagged behind many professional sports leagues, including the NBA, Premier Soccer and others, in using big data to assist in both injury prevention and peak performance," Dipoto continued. "We are excited to better connect all of the services we currently provide to our players throughout the organization and add the information that Dr. Martin can reveal to better assist the team in staying healthy and, ultimately, winning more games."
"I am excited to become part of the Mariners," Martin said. "I couldn't be happier to begin working for an organization that shares the same vision, and that values the importance of sports performance as much as I do. This position gives me the opportunity to utilize and implement all aspects of my knowledge to maximize performance."
Prior to joining the Mariners, Dr. Martin was Director of Sports Performance Analytics for the Los Angeles Lakers. In her role with the Lakers, she worked closely with the coaching, medical and strength and conditioning staff as well as management to ensure data driven methodology aimed at injury prevention and athletic performance.
Lorena has consulted for professional teams as well as worked with professional athletes in individual sports such as tennis and golf. Martin has also worked with Ripken Baseball (Sports Science Evaluator and Consultant), Athletic Mental Performance, Inc. (Sports Psychology Coach) and the Kaweah Delta Hospital District (Lead Statistician).
Her educational background includes earning three post-doctorates in GIS spatial analysis (2016), biostatistics (2015) and epidemiology (2014) at the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine Department of Family and Preventive Medicine. Martin earned her Ph.D. in Exercise Physiology from the University of Miami in July, 2013. She earned her Master of Science, Psychology from Nova Southeastern University (Ft. Lauderdale, FL) in June 2009 with a concentration in Sports Psychology and her B.A. in Psychology from the University of Miami (with a double minor in Leadership and Spanish) in June 2005.
Dr. Martin also spent time as a Visiting Scientist at the Salk Institute focusing on bioinformatics and has also been an invited Visiting Researcher at NASA Langley. She has taught at multiple universities including Northwestern University and the University of Miami.
In addition to many academic and professional publications and presentations, Dr. Martin is the author of the book Sports Performance Measurement and Analytics: The Science of Assessing Performance, Predicting Future Outcomes, Interpreting Statistical Models, and Evaluating the Market Value of Athletes (2016) and one of the co-authors of the book Sports Injury Prevention & Rehabilitation (2017).
Martin is an accomplished tennis player who competed at the amateur, college and professional levels.