D-Backs trade for OF Starling Marte
The Diamondbacks landed the center fielder they had been seeking the past two offseasons, acquiring Starling Marte from the Pittsburgh Pirates on Monday for a pair of prospects.
Marte, 31, gives the Diamondbacks a proven bat, a solid defender and the ability to shift Ketel Marte back to second base, where he could have an easier time staying healthy.
Starling Marte is coming off a season in which he hit .295/.342/.503 with a career-high 23 homers in 586 plate appearances for the Pirates. He owns a career .287/.341/.452 line.
He has two years remaining on his contract, which calls for salaries of $11.5 million in 2020 and $12.5 million on a 2021 team option, though the Pirates are kicking in $1.5 million to help cover his salary this year.
“We think he’s a fantastic baseball player,” Diamondbacks General Manager Mike Hazen said. “He has power. He can hit for average. He is a very good athlete. Plays a very good outfield, center field as well. And he fits a lot of what we’re trying to do.”
In exchange, the Diamondbacks parted with a pair of highly regarded, 19year-old prospects in infielder Liover Peguero and right-hander Brennan Malone. The club also included $250,000 in international bonus pool money.
Hazen hinted at this sort of trade when speaking to reporters at the winter meetings last month, suggesting the club was shifting gears as it moved into a cycle in which it would be comfortable peeling away from its prospect inventory. He reiterated his stance on Monday.
“It was painful giving up the players we did ultimately give up,” Hazen said. “We just felt, as I’ve stated before, we have a duty to both the present and the future and we felt like we were going to have to give something good up in order to get a good major league player. I felt like we did that here.”
Starling Marte won a pair of Gold Gloves for his work in left field in 2015 and 2016 but hasn’t been a finalist for the award since taking over in center field full-time in 2018.
Defensive metrics paint a conflicting picture of his abilities in center. Per UZR and defensive runs saved, he was a below-average defender in 2019; however, he rated a tick above the middle of the pack according to Outs Above Average, a metric derived from Statcast data.
Marte remains a positive contributor on the bases. He has averaged 41 stolen bases a year per 162 games since the start of the 2013 season and swiped 25 bags last year.
The Diamondbacks had been seeking a center fielder since the departure of A.J. Pollock via free agency following 2018. Unable to find someone last winter, Ketel Marte manned the position for most of 2019 and played well defensively.
But late in the year he suffered a stress reaction in his lower back, an injury that stemmed from overuse. Hazen acknowledge that moving Marte back to second base could help ease the physical burden on him, but he said it wasn’t the lone factor in trying to find a center fielder.
“If we could find a way to get a center fielder, which we felt like was the more challenging thing in the offseason, we felt we were that much better aligned in and out with him at second base,” Hazen said.
“We feel like he’s a Gold Glove second baseman. He was exceptional for us in center field last year. (But) we feel like he and Nick in 2018 were an exceptional defensive pair.”
The Marte acquisition also is noteworthy in that he was busted for performance-enhancing drugs in 2017, suspended 80 games after testing positive for Nandrolone, an anabolic steroid. Ken Kendrick, the Diamondbacks’ managing general partner, has long been an outspoken critic of PED users, and Marte is the biggest-name known PED user the club has acquired on Kendrick’s watch.