Last December, one of the biggest questions hanging over the Arizona Diamondbacks was whether Ketel Marte was actually on the move. The club was said to be “listening” on him, even as Marte was coming off another familiar kind of season: plenty of value on the field, plenty of distraction off it. With his 10-and-5 rights set to kick in at the start of the 2026 season in April, the speculation only grew louder about whether Arizona would deal him and where he might land.
The club that got closest, according to Alex Speier of the Boston Globe in February of 2026, was the Boston Red Sox. Speier reported that Boston had put Payton Tolle and Franklin Arias on the table for Marte.
Arizona, though, wanted Marcelo Mayer included, and the Red Sox wouldn’t go there. That was the end of it, and Marte stayed put.
But if the Diamondbacks had accepted that offer, the shape of their 2026 season might have looked very different.
Under that hypothetical deal, Boston would have gotten Marte while Arizona would have landed Tolle and Arias. In this exercise, Tolle becomes the fastball-heavy prospect who gives the Diamondbacks the kind of controllable arm they had been looking for. Arias, meanwhile, is treated as a high-end middle infield prospect who would have started in Amarillo, moved up to Reno, and maybe pushed for big league time later on - though here the assumption is that he spends the year in the minors without providing major league value.
The ripple effect gets bigger from there. If Marte is out, the assumption is that Arizona turns around and signs Alex Bregman to a 5-year, $175 million deal.
There had already been reporting that Bregman wanted to play for the Diamondbacks and stay where he played year-round, similar to the Corbin Burnes situation. And with Ken Rosenthal’s reporting in The Athletic in mind, the idea here is that trading Marte would have made Arizona an even more obvious fit.
This version of events also treats the reported timing of Bregman’s Cubs deal differently: the day after Arizona acquired Nolan Arenado on 1/12, Bregman signed with Chicago, and in this scenario that is viewed as him waiting on Arizona. So in this alternate timeline, the Diamondbacks replace Marte’s production by bringing in Bregman.
That move, in turn, wipes out two other developments. With Bregman and Tolle added, the Diamondbacks likely do not sign Zac Gallen, and they likely do not trade for Nolan Arenado either.
The one wrinkle left on the table is that Arenado reportedly was willing to play first base, but for this exercise that path is set aside. No Arenado.
No Gallen.
Using the same 2026 production assumptions for the new arrivals, the end result comes out to about 4.4 additional wins. Most of that gain comes from Tolle and from not signing Gallen. It is a pretty clean reminder of how one decision can tilt the rest of an offseason.
The financial side is part of the story too. In this version, the Diamondbacks would have saved about $10-11 million in 2026, though that would have been offset by nearly the same amount in 2027.
And there is another layer here: Franklin Arias. In this scenario, Arizona would have a clear consensus top 100 prospect, and not just any prospect.
Arias is currently MLB Pipeline’s No. 2 prospect in all of baseball after a 2026 season in which the 20-year-old shortstop hit .323 with 25 home runs in 117 games. He has elite contact skills, pop, and a premium defensive home, and he would have gone a long way toward softening the “lack of impact talent” label that currently hangs over the farm system.
He also would have given the organization a future option at shortstop or second base with Marte gone.
Put it all together, and the case for regret is pretty easy to see. The Diamondbacks likely would have had a stronger 2026 team, possibly a 90-win playoff contender, along with more stability in the rotation and middle infield at league-minimum cost. They might have been playing baseball over the past couple of weeks, and they would have entered 2027 with Burnes and Tolle anchoring the rotation, Bregman bringing leadership and near-6-WAR production into the middle of the order, and Arias sitting near the top of every prospect list.
None of that is guaranteed, of course. Players change teams, environments shift, and performance does not always travel neatly from one uniform to another.
The point here is not to claim certainty. It is simply to look at the reporting, take the trade that almost happened, and ask what the Diamondbacks might have had if they had said yes.