PHOENIX — Tuesday night’s 9-0 Arizona Diamondbacks win over the Pittsburgh Pirates had a welcome sight for the D-backs, and also a tiring one.
In the bottom of the first, Ketel Marte smashed a Bubba Chandler fastball 103 mph to left-center for a triple. Welcome!
Four innings later, Marte smashed a Chandler changeup 101 mph directly at right fielder Bryan Reynolds. Tiring!
Marte has not been productive this season. Across his 33 games, he is hitting .221 with three doubles, that one triple and five homers for a .651 OPS. The nine extra-base hits are the second fewest for Marte in his career at this point in each of his 12 seasons, per Stathead.
But that does not mean he’s off to a bad start necessarily. Marte’s been “unlucky” a little over a month in, a fact supported by metrics that he should get back to normal here anytime soon, beyond the fact he’s an awesome baseball player that will figure this out.
The D-backs, however, need that to happen immediately. They’ve managed to be .500 despite Marte’s slow start, Geraldo Perdomo not replicating his 2025 star breakout and a starting pitching staff that is reeling.
Arizona is due for some regression from its complementary bats hitting above their weight and bullpen arms far exceeding expectations.
Other parts of the team need to snap back into place, like Marte, but he’s also a part of a far more concerning trend for the team-wide offense.
Ketel Marte’s unlucky start at the plate
D-backs manager Torey Lovullo mentioned before the game that Marte’s “expected stats” are much better than his actual stats, meaning the way in which he is hitting the baseball typically adds up to more production than we’re seeing. And if he keeps doing it, the numbers will shift eventually.
For now, it’s frustrating, as you could see it on Marte’s face in the fifth.
Statcast qualifies a “hard-hit ball” at 95 mph. Marte’s now recorded 34 outs with those, tied for the second-most in the majors. Bump it to 100 mph and he’s still second with 23 outs. Bump it to 105 mph and he’s at 13 outs, tied for the most.
“We’ve looked every which way and truth is he’s been if not the unluckiest, one of the unluckiest hitters in baseball,” D-backs hitting coach Joe Mather told ArizonaSports.com. “The balls are smoking right at guys. Pitchers are not throwing him good pitches to hit a lot and he’s still (hitting the ball hard). … Big thing with us is making sure, yes everything is lining up mechanically but at the same time keeping him positive.”
“It’s probably one of the hardest parts of the game where you do everything right, you produce a line drive (and) you don’t direct it in the right spot. … What I tell a player like that is to make sure they’re aware of the expected numbers,” Lovullo said Wednesday, joking but not really joking that Marte is the type to respond to those numbers by telling him to “shove them clean up you-know-where.”
Lovullo has had good conversations with Marte throughout this time, bringing up how his defense has been good, his prep has been good and it’s just a matter of time.
“That will change,” Lovullo said of the low production. “And I’ll just tell him be kind to yourself you’re going to be just fine.”
To go back to those expected stats, focusing on the last two seasons as a baseline, seasons for which Marte was an All-Star, won a Silver Slugger and got MVP votes, they are right in line with that level of stellar play.
The expected stats that Lovullo referenced on Tuesday include an expected batting average of .303, 18 points higher than last year, and while the expected slugging percentage is a year-to-year drop-off from .534 to .482, that is still well above Marte’s career average and nearly 80 points ahead of the league average.
“When they start falling, it’s gonna fall like crazy,” Mather said.
To return to how freakin’ hard Marte is crushing the ball, his average exit velocity of 92.8 is actually up from last year’s 90.8.
The major oddity out of all this is actually that the switch-hitting Marte is pulling the ball like crazy, which at least speaks to something irregular taking place.
Marte’s career average for pull percentage is 40.7%, a few shades above the 37.4% MLB average, and this year’s number is at a nuclear 56.3%. Now, Marte was just north of 47% the last two years, so he was clearly doing this more as it was. But this year has gone into overdrive. That’s third in all of baseball.
“I don’t love it,” Lovullo said Wednesday.
“That’s our core belief: Middle of the diamond, 95 miles an hour or more and then go to work from there,” Lovullo added. “So if he gets back to that he’s going to be fine.”
Both Lovullo and Mather referenced the aforementioned triple from Tuesday, one Marte took into the opposite-field gap. That is the “core belief” shining through.
The positive spin here is a metric Baseball Savant lists as “pull air percentage” that is what it sounds like. It’s that same pull number but for how often the ball is in the air and not a ground ball. Why is this distinction important? Well, Savant characterizes those as an “extremely valuable outcome” noting from 2022-24 they were responsible for two-thirds of the league’s home runs and combined for a 1.227 slugging percentage (not OPS).
Marte’s 28.2% pull air percentage this year is top-20 leaguewide.
Remember all those hard-hit outs? Sorting through Marte’s 34, 20 of them are to the pull side. That joins Cubs third baseman Alex Bregman for the top mark and as the only players that have over 15.
Again, that’s a lot of anomalies. Baseball is weird like that.
But you know who is tired of abnormalities and waiting to get lucky? Ketel Marte and the Diamondbacks.
While that wait continues, Marte needs to improve his plate discipline like the rest of the team.
Marte contributing to uncharacteristic D-backs offense
In the Mike Hazen and Lovullo era, it has become a tradition to follow up on a new hitting acquisition announced by heading over to their Baseball Savant page and inevitably seeing that player scoring well in the analytics that tell you the story of, “This guy works a good at-bat.”
It’s the four bottom categories on each player’s page. Chase rate and whiff rate indicate how often a player swings at a pitch out of the zone and how often a player swings and misses, respectively. You do not need me to explain strikeout percentage and walk percentage.
Since 2019 (while eliminating the 60-game 2020 campaign), the D-backs ranks in these metrics have been as follows over the last six full seasons:
Chase rate: 19th, 8th, 2nd, 8th, 5th, 17th
Whiff rate: 6th, 15th, 9th, 3rd, 2nd, 8th
K percentage: 8th, 21st, 13th, 4th, 4th, 7th
BB percentage: 15th, 16th, 7th, 12th, 5th, 8th
There is an odd blip or two in there but for the most part it has been remarkably consistent that these are the most important factors for Arizona to prioritize amongst hitters.
This year, however, the outliers are extreme and totally out of whack.
Chase percentage has plummeted to 28th. Whiff percentage is fine at 12th, and ditto for strikeout percentage sitting 13th. But walk percentage is also down in the dumps, 29th, and that is the figure that speaks to something inherently going wrong with the D-backs offense.
Lovullo was honest on Wednesday when asked what he attributes that to.
“I don’t know, we’re trying to figure that out,” Lovullo said, noting it comes up every day behind closed doors. “We’re well aware of that. That’s not on our bingo card. We want to be patient, drive up pitch counts and find a way to drive pitchers out of ball games to get to the bullpen.”
It is easy to write this off as more personnel-based. The D-backs have had a handful of injuries already, which Lovullo hypothesizes some key hitters have been trying to compensate for. This is also a low sample size. Mather added how they’ve faced a ton of great pitchers already (on the day Paul Skenes took the bump for Pittsburgh).
But with all that said, the chase and walk data has changed for the worse for several players.
D-backs hitters with major inflation from their career chase rate include Marte (up 9.7%), Ildemaro Vargas (8.2%) and Alek Thomas (8%). There are a few more for the guys on shorter sample sizes with 50-60 plate appearances like Gabriel Moreno (13.3%) and James McCann (14.8%).
More importantly, both Marte and Carroll are striking out more and walking less than normal, joining Nolan Arenado as three of the mainstays in the lineup not doing their part with the signature sauce that Perdomo specializes in (and still has this year).
“We do not like the type of baseball we’re playing,” Lovullo said of the team’s approach at the plate.
Lovullo talked about this with Carroll specifically on Tuesday, speaking on his desire to destroy every pitch like he was reciting from the same talking points he gives every player.
“I just don’t think that’s possible,” Lovullo said of Carroll swinging that much. “You gotta set up the pitcher, hit the mistake [by waiting] for the ball that’s going into the area that you’re going to line up and do some damage.”
While Tuesday’s seven walks that tied a season high were aided by Chandler, the league leader in walks, the D-backs have now cracked five-plus base on balls in four of the last 12 games after doing so just once in the first 22 games of the season.
The D-backs better hope that is the start of a turnaround, because sitting 10th in OPS and 14th in runs scored is not going to be as comfortable of a position for much longer if they don’t get back to what they do best. The offense has been heavily carried by a major outlier, a slugging percentage with runners in scoring position of a preposterous .584, 75 points higher than any other team and 173 above league average.
Unless this is one of the most opportune and clutch offenses in recent memory, Marte and Arizona’s offense need to get back to normal.
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