SAN DIEGO — Mark Vientos was describing his pregame “meditating” routine to a reporter this week when J.D. Martinez, on his way back to the visitor’s clubhouse at Petco Park through the dugout tunnel, stopped for a listen to the conversation.
Martinez interjected: “Is it meditation or visualizing?”
Vientos corrected himself to the reporter: “Visualizing more than meditation.”
Such is the relationship that has developed between the Mets teammates this season.
The 37-year-old Martinez has assumed a mentorship role throughout the clubhouse, but especially with the inquisitive Vientos.
The two have known each other for several years from their shared South Florida roots — they work out at the same facility in the offseason.
But the relationship blossomed with Martinez’s arrival this season as a free agent and the 24-year-old Vientos’ ascent as a promising young player.
On team charter flights or bus rides, it’s often Vientos and Martinez seated side-by-side, with Francisco Lindor nearby, discussing baseball and life.
That education certainly hasn’t hurt Vientos on the field: He took a .282/.339/.557 slash line with 20 homers and 54 RBIs in 80 games into Friday night against the Padres.
“I’m very observant,” Vientos said. “I don’t need to say, ‘Hey, J.D., how do you hit .300 with 40 bombs?’ I don’t do that. I go, ‘Hey, J.D., what were your thoughts when you were my age,’ on this and that. I take what I think will work for me and leave what I don’t think will work for me and that is just how I go about asking questions.”
Martinez has enjoyed the brotherhood, even when it sometimes means telling Vientos he is asking too many questions.
“He comes to ask me stuff sometimes and I tell him straight up: ‘I’m not going to help you right now,’ ” Martinez said. “He’s like, ‘Why not?’ It’s because you don’t need it right now. I will tell you when you need it. You are trying to fix something that doesn’t need to be fixed. That’s when you get people in trouble. He doesn’t need to be fixed. He’s in a good place.”
If there’s been a special quality to Vientos’ season it’s been his ability to avoid a prolonged slump.
Consistency has been key — his .OPS has ranged between .866 and .917 for each of the months he’s been in the major leagues since his recall from Triple-A Syracuse on May 15.
Vientos credits sticking to a daily routine that includes the visualizations that Martinez reminded him weren’t meditation.
“I am visualizing what can happen in the game,” Vientos said. “I am trying to see scenarios and things that can happen so when I go out there, it’s like I have done it before.”
Asked about the fact Vientos has managed to avoid a slump, Martinez didn’t want to touch the subject.
“It’s a bad omen to talk about that,” Martinez said. “I will just say that he’s got a good rhythm going and he’s aware of his swing and he knows what cues work for him.”
Vientos competed for the starting third base job in spring training, but Brett Baty was selected to the Opening Day roster and Vientos began the season at Syracuse.
But with Baty struggling in mid-May, the Mets gave Vientos an opportunity and he hasn’t relented. It took him essentially only a half-season to become the seventh Mets player to hit 20 homers in a season before turning 25.
“I’m extremely happy with myself and proud that I have done it,” Vientos said of his season in general. “But it’s not something I didn’t think I was capable of doing.”
Martinez won’t take any credit for Vientos’ emergence, but is enjoying the ride as a big brother.
“He’s a good kid and has a good personality,” Martinez said. “We give him a hard time. Frankie [Lindor] and me get on him all the time … the good thing is I think we are making him aware of the things that matter. A lot of times you can come up and you are not aware of what’s important. I think we are making him aware of the things that matter.”
