J.D. Martinez hitting his stride in Detroit

DETROIT — J.D. Martinez doesn’t mind talking about his past.

He doesn’t mind talking about feeling hurt, and a bit depressed when the worst team in baseball gave up on him.

And he doesn’t mind admitting he was slightly embarrassed when no team in baseball claimed him off waivers, and every organization passed on him during the Rule 5 Draft.

Truth be told, it was one of the toughest periods of Martinez’s life. But he refuses to forget it.

“I think about it all the time,” Martinez said. “I went from being released to where I am now. It’s unreal.”

By now, Martinez has told the story hundreds of times.

While watching his then-teammate Jason Castro take batting practice in Toronto late in the 2013 season, the then-26-year-old Martinez made an abrupt decision to revamp his baseball swing.

It was a radical move for Martinez, a 20th-round Draft pick in 2009, who was built like a baseball-crushing machine, but never quite lived up to his run-producing potential in Houston.

After hitting just 24 home runs and batting .251 in parts of three seasons with the Astros, Martinez took notice of Castro’s uppercut swing, and — with the help of longtime Astros bullpen coach Javier Bracamonte — slowly applied a similar form to his own swing.

It was a high-risk gamble that would pay off down the road. But …

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