Ketel Marte keeps giving the Diamondbacks the kind of moments that make patience feel like a strategy instead of a gamble.
In a piece published Aug. 27, 2026, Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic wrote that Marte is expected to rejoin the team as soon as Monday, the first day he is eligible to come off the injured list. That timing matters because the conversation around Marte is never just about when he plays. It is also about what the Diamondbacks are willing to absorb around him.
Rosenthal points to one of the clearest reasons Arizona keeps leaning in: Marte can change a game in a flash. In early June, he hit a walk-off homer against Tanner Scott that gave the Diamondbacks a split of their home series with the Los Angeles Dodgers. The blast came off a 97 mile-per-hour fastball and traveled 431 feet, according to The Athletic. Rosenthal notes that the homer was the sixth-hardest hit ball by an Arizona player this season, and that Marte also holds the team’s top five exit velocities, along with the club’s longest homer at 452 feet.
That is the tradeoff in plain view. A player can frustrate a team and still be hard to move away from when he can produce the kind of swing that sends teammates spilling out of the dugout and a crowd into a frenzy. Marte, 32, is described by Rosenthal as one of the top second basemen in baseball, and that level of talent tends to buy a lot of second chances.
But the latest concerns are real, too. Rosenthal reports that Marte’s missteps included failing to show up for a game in the middle of a pennant race and later unwinding at a casino while rehabilitating a knee injury. Those episodes renewed questions about how much a team can tolerate when the upside is so obvious and the off-field noise keeps returning.
That tension is what makes Marte such a complicated figure for Arizona. The Diamondbacks do not seem to be betting on perfection. They are betting that the impact he can deliver on the field is still worth the headache that comes with everything else. And when a player can turn one swing into a night the whole ballpark remembers, it is easy to see why that bet keeps getting renewed.
