Watch: Martin lifts Blue Jays to 2nd straight walk-off
Nobody has ever been as excited to get drenched with a cooler of red Gatorade as Russell Martin was Wednesday night at Rogers Centre.
Martin, after all, has endured a miserable start to his 2016 campaign, hitting just .149 with an abysmal .391 OPS through his first 23 games. But the 30-year-old got some much-needed catharsis against the Texas Rangers, delivering a based-loaded single in the bottom of the ninth to lift the Toronto Blue Jays to a 4-3 win and their second walk-off victory in as many days.
"Definitely happy about the fact that I got it done in this situation," said Martin, his uniform tinted red, in his postgame interview with Sportsnet's Hazel Mae.
About 24 hours earlier, Justin Smoak single-handedly saved the Blue Jays from another gut-wrenching loss, erasing a ninth-inning deficit with a solo shot off Shawn Tolleson before sending everybody home with a two-run blast the following inning. On Wednesday, the hero role belonged to Martin, whose early-season struggles were so dire he decided to shave off his inimitable beard earlier this week.
"He needed that," Blue Jays manager John Gibbons said. "We needed that."
(Video courtesy: MLB.com)