I’m going to say it plainly: the Diamondbacks cannot keep treating Ketel Marte like a player they have to shield from himself. Not after 2026. Not after the numbers. Not after the mess.

Marte’s season was already a step down on the field. He hit .249/.316/.432 with a .748 OPS and 22 homers, which is nowhere near the MVP-level production he has generally delivered in recent years. That alone would have been enough to raise eyebrows. But the real issue was bigger than the stat line. He had an unexcused absence in Boston, and that was the second time in as many seasons he no-showed to a game and ended up on the Restricted List. Second time. In two seasons. That is not a one-off. That is a pattern.

And patterns matter. Especially when you’re talking about a player the club still has to build around, or at least plan around, if he remains with the team. The Diamondbacks simply cannot afford to let those same behaviors slide again in the coming years. They just can’t. At some point, “we’ll handle it internally” stops sounding responsible and starts sounding like denial.

That’s why the idea of doing things differently in 2027 makes sense to me. Not because Marte is suddenly some lost cause. Not because the talent vanished. It didn’t. The talent is still there, and that’s exactly why this is so frustrating. When a player can still matter that much, the standard has to be higher, not lower. The club can’t keep acting like the answer is to absorb the chaos and hope it passes.

Torey Lovullo is part of this too. The manager is no longer “protecting” Marte, and honestly, good. That kind of posture only works for so long before it starts to look like the organization is more interested in smoothing things over than setting a line. The line has to exist. It has to mean something.

So yes, I think Arizona handling Marte differently in 2027 is overdue. Long overdue. The season numbers were down. The absence was real. The Restricted List history is real. The Diamondbacks have every reason to be done with the soft approach. Enough. Now we find out whether the message finally matches the moment.