Diamondbacks GM Mike Hazen said at the end of December that the club was “shortly” going to cease all trade talks involving second baseman Ketel Marte, and the unofficial deadline apparently came on January 9, once reports emerged that Marte would be staying put. Probably unsurprisingly, this didn’t end the trade speculation entirely, but even as the offseason player market has continued to evolve just over the last eight days, Hazen has maintained his stance that discussions are over.
“We’ve already engaged in that process. I said at the time that I set the deadline for a reason, to avoid this,” Hazen told MLB.com’s Steve Gilbert and other reporters. Hazen also noted that by telling both Marte and rival executives that trade talks have ended, he’d be risking his credibility (both with D’Backs players and in future negotiations) by going back on his word now.
It is worth noting that there have been several instances in the past of players being traded after a front office exec has seemingly shut down trade discussions — perhaps the most famous in recent years was Nationals GM Mike Rizzo declaring “we are not trading Juan Soto” two months before Soto was indeed dealt to the Padres at the 2022 trade deadline. It is also fair to assume that Hazen would have a hard time saying no if another team emerged in the coming days with a Marte trade offer that was absurdly tilted in Arizona’s favor.
That said, there is no reason to doubt Hazen’s resolve in this case. While some reports emerged last summer about clubhouse discontent directed towards Marte, it never seemed too likely that the Diamondbacks would trade a star player they signed to another long-term extension just last April. This new extension (covering the 2025-31 seasons) overwrote Marte’s previous deal that ran through the 2027 campaign, and added $64MM in new money.
$102.5MM remains on the final six years of the contract, and if Marte was a free agent this winter, he would’ve topped that number even as his enters his age-32 season. This relative discount price made Marte an attractive alternative for teams who may not have been wowed by free agent options, or weren’t willing to meet the asking prices of players on the market. Such teams as the Red Sox, Tigers, Blue Jays, Mariners, Rays, Phillies, Pirates, and Giants were publicly linked to Marte’s trade market, though Pittsburgh and San Francisco are two of the five teams on Marte’s no-trade list.
The Pirates may have been out on Marte anyway after acquiring Brandon Lowe to address their second base needs. The same could be true of the Rays (after acquiring Gavin Lux) and the Jays (after adding Kazuma Okamoto to the infield mix), but the other rumored suitors could conceivably be in play if the Diamondbacks still had any appetite for a Marte deal.
Most notably, the Red Sox and Phillies fell short in their respective pursuits of Alex Bregman and Bo Bichette, leaving those two teams perhaps most keen on another big-ticket infield upgrade. For the Sox in particular, Gilbert noted that Boston’s signing of Ranger Suarez signing led to a lot of D’Backs fans immediately wondering if the Red Sox would now be more comfortable in sending controllable pitching to Arizona for Marte.
On the flip side, of course, any increased desperation on the part of other teams might cause Hazen to increase what was already known to be a very high asking price for Marte’s services. But, the time for haggling now seems to be over on Hazen’s part, and (barring any unexpected developments) it seems like Marte will simply return to the heart of the Diamondbacks’ lineup in 2026.