The Cincinnati Reds can look at the Ketel Marte mess in Arizona and feel a little better about one thing: that trade never happened.
Less than a year ago, Marte’s name was tied to the Reds in rumor after rumor. That chatter looks a lot different now. The Diamondbacks’ All-Star second baseman has been at the center of a growing situation that has only gotten messier, and Cincinnati fans should be relieved they never wound up with him this past offseason.
Marte went AWOL for Arizona’s series opener at Fenway Park on August 17. The Diamondbacks put him on the restricted list, then later moved him to the injured list. The noise around the situation got louder when Marte was seen at an Arizona casino while his teammates were playing a game, even though he was on the IL.
This isn’t some isolated blip, either. Marte has carried baggage before, including the infamous moment when he left his teammates high and dry after the All-Star break last season. He has been a constant off-the-field distraction, and Arizona’s patience clearly wore thin.
That’s part of why the Diamondbacks spent the offseason trying to move him. They made several attempts to trade the two-time Louisville Slugger Silver Slugger Award winner, but nothing got done. Now Marte has 10-5 rights, which gives him the ability to block any deal.
So Arizona is stuck with an All-Star-level player it would love to unload, but his issues make it nearly impossible to get real market value back. And that brings the conversation back to Cincinnati, where the Reds have a different kind of headache with Hunter Greene.
Greene doesn’t come with the kind of off-field controversy Marte does. By every account, the Reds’ coaching staff and his teammates have nothing bad to say about him. Still, there has been some friction over the years between Greene and certain members of the Reds’ media, and that has fed questions about a disconnect between the right-hander and some of the club’s top executives.
Even with that difference, the Reds would love to trade Greene. They tried to do it before the August 3 deadline passed.
The problem is his value has been battered by injury. He’s on the 60-day IL after elbow surgery last month and is likely to miss the entire 2027 season.
That prognosis changes the math for Cincinnati. The Reds are not going to get top value for Greene, and the case for moving him is less about return and more about clearing the books. His $15.3 million salary is the bigger prize here.
Trading a player when his value is at its lowest is never an easy sell, and that’s the position both the Reds with Greene and the Diamondbacks with Marte are facing. It’s not a great look for roster management, though anyone who has followed the Reds long enough already knows Nick Krall has had his shortcomings.
So yes, Cincinnati can breathe a little easier knowing Arizona’s problem never became its own with Marte. But the Reds are still staring at a similar issue of their own with Greene, just in a different form.
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