PHOENIX -- For the past two months, J.D. Martinez has been doing his best Luis Gonzalez impersonation.
Martinez hit his 43rd homer of the season in a 12-6 loss to the Marlins at Chase Field on Saturday night, adding another accomplishment to his rapidly growing list. It was his 14th homer in September and his 27th in 56 games with the D-backs. The solo shot moved him past Gonzalez, who hit 13 in April 2001, for the most homers by a D-backs player in one month.
"You just laugh now," Paul Goldschmidt said. "He's been so good for us. He's really carried us since he came over here these last two months. He's been a huge part of this team, and it's just really, really impressive. It's fun to watch."
The offensive numbers Martinez has put up since he joined the D-backs in July are reminiscent of Gonzalez's monstrous 2001 season in which he tallied 57 homers and 142 RBIs. But it wasn't until Martinez and Gonzalez met for the first time that the D-backs legend pointed out just how similar their paths to Arizona were.
"He came up to me, and he started telling me, 'Bro, I have like the same story as you,'" Martinez said. "We share a lot of similarities. We both started with Houston, and then got traded to Detroit, and then from Detroit we came here. Stuff like that. It's great, he's a great guy. I hate to take that record, because he's awesome."
Martinez leads the Majors in slugging percentage (.687) and is second in barrels per plate appearance, trailing only Aaron Judge when it comes to Statcast™'s measuring stick for rate of hard contact.
Martinez, who has won an MLB record four Player of the Week awards this season, is still trying to pinpoint what makes this particular stretch different from other hot streaks.
"It's like, one of those locked in [stretches] where if I hit it, it just happens to be a homer," Martinez said. "I don't know -- my swing just has the loft right now, and that's kind of how I compare it. There's been other times where I go up there and I l flush four balls and I do that for like a week straight. I think that's when I'm really, really locked in. It's kind of, I guess, arrogant to say that I'm not locked in, because I'm having a lot of success with the balls that I'm hitting. But I kind of measure locked in as how often I'm hitting the barrel consistently."