Ketel Marte’s sudden absence has put the Diamondbacks in an uncomfortable spot, and Mets fans know the feeling.
Marte traveled with Arizona to Boston but never made it to Fenway Park, leaving the club to place him on the restricted list while it tries to sort out what happened. He is physically fine, but the team is dealing with one of its key players disappearing without notice. That kind of mess rings a bell in Queens.
The Mets lived through a version of this with Yoenis Cespedes in 2020. With players allowed to opt out because of the pandemic, Cespedes ultimately chose to do so after an 0-for-4 day with two strikeouts. But the road to that decision was anything but straightforward.
Cespedes no-showed a game against the Atlanta Braves, and then-GM Brodie Van Wagenen said the Mets couldn’t get in touch with him.
"He did not reach out to management with any explanation for his absence," Van Wagenen said. "Our attempts to contact him have been unsuccessful."
Afterward, Van Wagenen added that he was relieved Cespedes was OK, "because there's a period of time where we weren't sure." He also described it as a "disappointing end" to Cespedes' four-year contract with the Mets.
That episode landed especially hard because Cespedes had opened the season with a home run in a 1-0 win over the Braves on July 24, which made it look like the old version of him might be back. Instead, the strikeouts piled up. He struck out at least once in his final seven games, and in six of those games he had multiple strikeouts.
For the Mets, what made the whole thing sting was the way it unfolded. If Cespedes had opted out before the season began, it would have been easy enough to understand. Instead, after eight games of uneven play, it felt like he had walked away from the team.
Arizona is now staring at a different but familiar headache. Marte is not putting together an MVP-level season, but he has still been important to the club, which remains in the playoff chase. The Diamondbacks also just played in Atlanta over the weekend, where Marte left one game with left knee soreness, sat another, and played the finale.
The Mets’ Cespedes situation eventually faded because it marked the end of his four-year run. He never played another major league season. And in one of those classic Mets oddities, he had more plate appearances in his one fully healthy season with the team in 2016, when he had 543, than he managed in the combined four years that followed, when he totaled 512.
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