Ketel Marte is staying put.
The Arizona Diamondbacks have determined to maintain the All-Star second baseman after entertaining commerce provides, in keeping with The Athletic.
Normal supervisor Mike Hazen had indicated the saga was nearing a decision, saying late final month that the D-backs have been “very likely to put an end to this shortly.”
“This isn’t going to continue to linger,” Hazen advised MLB.com on the time. “We need to focus our offseason. Again, my gut this whole time was that [a trade of Marte] wasn’t going to happen, and I think it seems likely that that’s the case and we want to focus on other things we need to do.”
The righty-swinging Marte, 32, batted .283 with 28 residence runs and an .893 OPS in 126 video games final season, and he’s owed a hyper-reasonable $102.5 million over the six years remaining on his contract.
However the Diamondbacks thought-about parting with Marte after a disappointing 80-82 season wherein they traded away a number of veterans earlier than the deadline. Marte grew to become the topic of criticism when he missed three video games following the All-Star break after his Phoenix-area residence was burglarized.
Arizona was stated to be looking for a superstar-worthy return for Marte, a three-time All-Star who completed third in 2024 Nationwide League MVP voting.
The Mets, who would profit from a giant right-handed bat to guard Juan Soto, have been floated as a possible match, regardless that that they had already added Marcus Semien this offseason to play second base.
Marte has expertise taking part in the outfield, however he’s made solely two appearances there over the previous 4 seasons and none within the final two years.
Complicating the state of affairs was that Marte’s contract reportedly has a no-trade checklist of 5 groups, together with the Yankees, whose personal second baseman, Jazz Chisholm Jr., was the topic of commerce rumors earlier within the offseason.
Marte will receive the power to veto a commerce to any workforce in April, when he achieves 10-5 standing as an MLB participant with 10 years of MLB service time, together with 5 with the identical workforce.
The elimination of Marte from the commerce market provides one other layer of inactivity to what has been a very slow-moving MLB offseason.
