Diamondbacks 2022 Season Player Reviews: Ketel Marte

Long slumps and a balky hamstring mar the Diamondbacks marquee player's season

© Isaiah J. Downing-USA TODAY Sports

Status: Final Year of first contract extension: $8,400,000

Ketel Marte 2022 and Career Stats / Jack Sommers

2022 Diamondbacks Season Reviews

Season Review

Ketel Marte was acquired by GM Mike Hazen prior to the 2017 season in a trade with the Seattle Mariners. He was viewed as a light hitting middle infielder but the switch hitter had shown some pop from the right side. That power began to emerge in earnest during the second half of the 2018 season and blossomed in full during his breakout 2019 campaign. He hit .329 with 32 home runs, driving in 92, and posting a .981 OPS, which was good for a 149 OPS+. (100 = league average). He made the All Star team and finished 4th in the MVP voting. His season ended September 17th however when he suffered a stress reaction in his lower back. 

It was during that 2019 season that Marte played over half his games at centerfield. Perhaps to lower the wear and tear on his back, the team signed Starling Marte and moved Marte back to second base in 2020. The Pandemic shortened season was a down one for Marte. His batting average was still good, at .287, but he slugged only two homers and had a 97 OPS+. In 2021 he re-emerged to hit like he had in 2019, posting a .318/.377/.532 triple slash and a 143 OPS+. However, moved back to centefield he missed 77 days of the season with two trips to the IL for hamstring issues. He also posted large negative numbers on defense in centerfield. 

Entering his age 28 season for 2022, the team made the decision to move him back to second base for good. They also made the even bigger decision to extend his contract starting in 2023 for five years, $76,000,000. 

The season started extremely slow for Marte. He hit just .146 with one homer and 22 strike outs in 90 plate appearances. He got hot in terms of batting average in May, batting .363 and taking 10 walks as well to post a .426 OBP. He only hit one homer for the month however, and entered June with just two long balls for the season. He continued to raise his average and slowly improve his power output. By June 15th he was hitting .269 and had 22 doubles, and 4 homers. However he had to be removed from the game with a sore hamstring on that date. It was serious enough to require an MRI on June 18th. He never went on the IL, but missed all but one game between June 16th and the 23rd. 

When he returned to the lineup on June 24th it was as the DH, and he would not play second base again until July 22nd.  Perhaps that agreed with him. In his next 20 games he hit .313/.434/.612, 1.046  OPS, slugging  5 homers and taking 15 walks too. That raised his season batting average to .274 and OPS to .830 and it looked like he would more than salvage his season. 

Unfortunately right around the time he returned to playing defense he slumped for the rest of the year. Over his final 54 games he hit just .189 with three home runs. His season end .240 average was the lowest of his career, and the .727 OPS was the second lowest. It should be noted that  league average OPS was down across the league, dropping from .728 in 2021 to .709 in 2022. Marte's OPS+ of 106 was still 6% above league average. But there is no way to characterize his season at the plate as anything but a disappointment. Marte went on the IL for the final week of the season for an undisclosed injury. Typically that means Covid-19, but that was never confirmed. 

Defense

Marte's defense appears to be in decline. Focusing just on second base, here are his numbers for the last five years.

Ketel Marte second base defense

Whether going by advanced metrics or traditional fielding percentage, the downward trend is clear. rDRS is defensive runs saved as calculated by Sports Information Systems and published on each player's baseball reference page. OAA is the Statcast metric, Outs Above Average, published on the player pages at Baseball Savant. It wasn't just the numbers though. Watching him every day, he often seemed disinterested and unfocused on defense. Ironically that seemed to improve over the final month or so of the season. Perhaps his hamstrings were feeling better and he was playing more freely and letting his athleticism come through. This observer had that impression over the final weeks. 

2023 Outlook

Barring injury or a surprising trade, Ketel Marte will be the starting second baseman for the Diamondbacks in 2023.  He will be paid $11.6 million in the first year of his new 5 year/$76M contract. (The salary continues to escalate after 2023)

It's likely the team will continue to try to manage his now chronic hamstring issues with periodic rest and starts at DH.  

One area of note is with the elimination of infield shifts, it might benefit Marte at the plate. His wOBA (weighted on base average) was 34 points higher when teams played a standard infield defense against him. 

Split	BA	Slug	wOBA
Shift	.233	.400	.304
No Shift	.251	.417	.338

The flip side of that is with his declining defense and range, not being able to shift may expose that decline even further. 

When he's at his best, Marte is a top 10-15 hitter in the league. That's why the team invested in him.  After making such a large financial commitment through his age 33 season it's critical for the team that he stay healthy, engaged and focused and can get back to being the hitter he's capable of being.