By the numbers: Diamondbacks All-Star Ketel Marte’s season
Sep 21, 2019, 7:21 AM | Updated: 8:25 am
Arizona Diamondbacks' Ketel Marte reacts in the dugout after hitting a solo home run against the Toronto Blue Jays in the third inning of their baseball game in Toronto on Sunday, June 9, 2019. (Fred Thornhill/The Canadian Press via AP)
(Fred Thornhill/The Canadian Press via AP)
Arizona Diamondbacks third base coach Tony Perezchica was emphatically waving Ketel Marte home as he sprinted around second base on Tuesday night. The cheers at Chase Field picked up as Marte’s strides turned into a slide across home plate.
He had scored the first run of the game for the D-backs, but when he stood up, he grimaced. He was taken out of the game right there.
Marte’s season is over due to a stress reaction in his lower back. His 2-for-2 with a run performance on Tuesday was a fitting end to one of the greatest seasons in D-backs history.
Here how Marte performed by the numbers:
.329/.389/.592
His final slash line is .329/.389/.592, good for the third-highest batting average and seventh-best OPS in the MLB this year.
His average is also the second-highest in D-backs history. He trails only Luis Gonzalez’s .336 clip in 1999.
Gonzalez and Tony Clark are the only D-backs that have ever produced a higher slugging percentage than Marte’s .592.
7.1
Marte’s fWAR finished at 7.1, tied for the fifth-highest in the majors with Washington’s Anthony Rendon. Those two only trail Mike Trout, Christian Yelich, Alex Bregman and Cody Bellinger.
Gonzalez and Paul Goldschmidt are the only position players that have ever produced more fWAR in a single season for Arizona.
Marte racked up more fWAR in 2019 than he did in all of his previous four seasons combined.
187
Marte finished his season with 187 hits, seventh in team history. Had he stayed healthy for the final 10 games, he would likely have picked up somewhere around 12 to 13 more based on his percentage of hits per game. He only needed the 13 to reach 200 hits in a season, something that only Gonzalez in 1999 and Jean Segura in 2016 have done as D-backs.
He’ll have to try to reach that milestone in 2020.
1
There is one switch-hitting duo in MLB history that has hit 30 home runs each. Marte and Arizona third baseman Eduardo Escobar make up that tandem after the pair hit 32 and 35 long balls respectively in 2019.
To reach his 30th home run, Marte blasted a missile over the right-field wall for a grand slam on Sept. 4.
Ketel Marte and @escobarmaracay become the 1st pair of NL switch-hitting teammates to each hit 30 HR in a season. pic.twitter.com/6IHUQiRjFD
— MLB Stats (@MLBStats) September 5, 2019
92
Marte’s career-high in RBIs was 59 before this year. Now, it is 92. Only the Yankees’ DJ Lemahieu has more as a second baseman in 2019.
Marte drove in 12 of those runs during the first week of September (six games), and was named National League Player of the Week for his efforts.
$4 million
Despite Marte’s rise to stardom for Arizona, the team will only have to pay him $4 million next season. Marte signed a five-year extension prior to the 2018 season, before his breakout. Now, he is under team control for a bargain deal until the end of the 2024 season. Unless the contract gets restructured, this gives Arizona a lot of flexibility with its salary moving forward.
