This Ketel Marte Thing Is Getting Strange

The Arizona Diamondbacks either have an injured cleanup hitter, a truancy problem, a communications dysfunction, some mysterious and possibly sinister fourth thing, or all of the above.

Well, there's a sixth possibility. They don't mind taking a beat writer for a ride now and then to preserve clubhouse tranquility. But let's take that as a given because that's what a beat writer is for: to toss under the bus when you want the driver to stop.

Anyway, one of their best players, second baseman and designated hitter Ketel Marte, skipped Monday night's 11-1 loss in Boston after going through the bother of flying there from Atlanta with his teammates. This led Arizona Republic beat writer Nick Piecoro, a responsible sort with two decades of said responsibility in the job to prove it, to X this:

This seemed odd but not unprecedented, as Marte bolted the team last year because someone had vandalized his home while he was on the road. Manager Torey Lovullo said before Monday’s game that he still “believed” Marte was going to show up at the ballpark, but after it was played without his participation or attendance, Lovullo was visibly emotional and seemingly uninformed about the status of his player.

"It's been a crazy day,” Lovullo said. “All I know is that he's dealing with a personal issue. We're trying to figure that out. He didn't show up today and he was put on the restricted list. That's as much as I know right now.”

This morning, Piecoro sent this: 

So let's review. Piecoro was told on Monday that Marte was healthy but absent, then he was told on Tuesday that Marte was not healthy and going home to learn about how not healthy he was. And Marte is on the restricted list, which is not where you put injured players. Rather than look for the lie here, though, we are wondering if the Diamondbacks' story didn't change as their needs changed. Now it could be that Marte left because he was angry with his knee, but that doesn't adequately explain why he decided not to tell the people he works for. Or it could be that the Diamondbacks are trying to salve a sore situation and gussied up an MRI story that may or may not be fib-based. And the beauty of it is that without further information, you get to guess which is true, or make up your own scenario that tickles your sense of whimsy. And when does letting the audience decide what's true ever go hinky?

A straightforward event is now a bag full of fused pretzels that leaves Marte, his teammates, Lovullo and the front office to put out a series of fires that didn't need setting. And we're not here to chastise them all for having such low regard for continuity; baseball has had a longer relationship with media than any other American sport and as such is more casual about narrative digressions. Since everything is a lie and everyone is a liar, we get to make up whatever reality is available to us, all the way up to and including the possibility that Marte wants to be traded to the Phoenix Suns.

So rather than criticize the Diamondbacks for making up stories on the fly to cover their immediate need—which was to tell Piecoro something that would convince him to go away—let's just say they decided to give the rest of us a charming little DIY mystery to chew on while they try to navigate the ever-congealing mess that is the National League wild card puddle. This will keep us busy for hours, or until we remember that there's always another story shuffling up the walk to tickle our universal fabulists' instincts. Say, what are the L.A. NBA teams up to these days?