This is one of those moves that I’m certain the Tigers would’ve made 15 years ago. Ketel Marte is an elite second baseman. He may very well be the best second baseman in the entire sport. Even though things got a little bit wonky in Arizona this year, I know that this dude can play. At his peak, he’s a borderline MVP-caliber offensive player with a lot of postseason experience, even winning the NLCS MVP in 2023. I would want him here, and I do think that it’s exciting to see the Tigers interested in him. I just don’t know if they have the pieces to make it work.
To catch people up to speed, the Arizona Diamondbacks entered last season thinking they would have an elite rotation that could get them back to the postseason. That entire rotation fell apart. They ended up being sellers at the deadline, and now they find themselves in a position where they’re not able to hit the full reset button. Still, they’re definitely rebuilding to a certain extent, and part of that rebuild will probably involve moving Ketel Marte. Arizona will be looking to add pitching help and get younger.
Obviously, with Marte being a second baseman, one of the first names you think of as a potential trade piece is Colt Keith. I’ve been a Colt Keith defender for a long time and still think there’s a good player somewhere in there, but his lack of any real defensive position lowers his ceiling by quite a bit, so I'd be more than happy to kick him to the curb if it meant bringing Ketel Marte to the Detroit Tigers. As far as the pitching is concerned, you have to think that Arizona would be asking for Troy Melton in a deal like this. I like Melton a lot, and I wouldn’t in principle be against the idea of him being part of a package for Ketel Marte, but as much as we’ve lauded this young Tigers farm system, even their biggest supporters have been open about the fact that the pitching is not up to par with the position players. There’s about a 99% probability that Tarik Skubal will be playing for another team in 2027, which means that you can’t really afford to gut your pitching depth even more than you already have.
This is sort of where I wonder if I’ve just been broken down by the team that I root for. I feel like a decade ago, I would’ve been pounding the table for Ketel Marte, a guy who isn’t a free agent until 2031. Forget the youngsters, forget the prospects. Get your guy. I’ve been open about the fact that at some point, Scott Harris is going to need to take a risk, and I’m not going to overly criticize him if he thinks that this is the risk worth taking. But nowadays, whenever I hear that the Tigers are interested in a star player, whether it’s in trade or free agency, my first instinct is to think they’ll get outbid. It’s undeniably true that the pitching depth will need to be addressed over the next few seasons. It would be putting a lot of faith in the coaching staff to lose Skubal, potentially trade a piece like Melton, and still hope that this organization's pitching can be up to the caliber it needs to be. For that reason, I don’t see the Tigers making that kind of splash, as fun as it may be.