Lorena Martin Hired by Mariners in New Role for Injury Rehab, Prevention

The Seattle Mariners hired Lorena Martin to serve as the team’s director of high performance, per Larry Stone of the Seattle Times, a role that will see Martin "oversee the medical, strength and conditioning, nutrition and mental skills departments."  

"We started opening doors I don’t know if anyone in baseball had really opened in the high-performance world," general manager Jerry Dipoto told Stone. "And we started realizing, 'Oh, my gosh, there's so much out there that we were not aware of, because we were always working in our close-minded baseball world.' That's where I've been for three decades."

Dipoto's goal is to limit the time players spend on the disabled list in the upcoming seasons by 25 percent, per Stone, and in Martin, they hired someone with an extensive background in a number of concentrations.

According to Stone, she has "a masters in psychology from Nova Southeastern University, a Ph.D. in exercise physiology from the University of Miami, and three post-doctorates in GIS spatial analysis, biostatistics and epidemiology from the University of California-San Diego, plus fluency in Spanish and status as a certified athletic trainer, certified strength coach and certified nutritionist."

For a Mariners team that dealt with constant injuries throughout the 2017 season and had to use a franchise-record 40 pitchers throughout the year, a cutting-edge approach to its health and training staff makes sense. Stone noted the team lost 1,477 days to injuries in the 2017 season, which certainly isn't conducive to winning should it become a pattern.

For the 78-84 Mariners, those health issues could have been the difference between reaching the postseason and missing October baseball. The team finished seven games out of the wild-card chase behind the Minnesota Twins.

Martin previously worked as a the director of performance analytics for the Los Angeles Lakers, but her new role with the Mariners will offer her the opportunity to utilize her varied background.

"My way of visualizing this is that everyone has an equation for how they best perform," she said. "There are certain things psychologically and physically that get that person into their zone to perform at their best. So finding that optimum for each player—I can't tell you all the tricks of the trade, but finding that for each player and putting that into practice is what I’m here to do."