DETROIT -- Victor Martinez isn't the type of player to get excited about his own performances, especially when it comes to the media.
Saturday, though, his half-smile and nod meant as much to the Tigers as a scream of joy from another player.
Even though the Tigers had lost 6-2, Martinez had a good day at the plate. Batting from the left side, which meant he was pivoting on his surgically repaired knee, he drove a double into the right-centerfield gap in the sixth inning, then hit a ball even harder off the rightfield wall in the eighth.
"I'm not going to lie -- that felt really good," he said. "My knee is getting a lot better. It's still a long way from where I need it to be, but I'm working on it every day."
As a switch-hitter, Martinez is used to being able to hit the ball hard from either side of the plate, but that had changed drastically this year. Hitting righthanded, he's been as good as ever, batting .462 in 26 at-bats with only one strikeout, but from the other side of the plate, he had been hitting like a pitcher -- a .141 batting average with no extra-base hits coming into Saturday.
"It is a situation when I know I need to stay back in order to hit the ball, but that's hard to know when the knee hurts so much," he said. "Now that it is getting better, I'm starting to be able to stay back and drive the ball."
As bad as it got, though, he never considered abandoning switch-hitting and just becoming a right-handed hitter, at least until things healed.
"Nope. Never," he said.
Martinez still can't run -- he didn't even try for second base in the eighth despite hitting a rocket that went past Jarrod Dyson, off the wall and past Dyson again -- but the Tigers are happy with the line drives.
"Victor has been fine all year from the right side, and he's slowly progressing from the left side," Brad Ausmus said. "Today was very good news for us, because those are probably the two hardest-hit balls he's had from the left side all season."
Martinez returning to his normal self would be a huge boost for the Tigers' offense, especially with J.D. Martinez also showing signs of busting out of a two-week skid.
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