It’s late summer, which means there is once again confusion around the Arizona Diamondbacks and the status of their star second baseman, Ketel Marte.
The mercurial veteran was set to play on Monday against the Boston Red Sox, but did not show up at Fenway Park for the game. Marte’s absence led to a delay in the D’Backs’ lineup announcement and a tense postgame scene. Manager Torey Lovullo, with tears in his eyes, expressed support for the player while stating the team would keep Marte’s situation “private.”
Late Monday night, Arizona Sports radio host John Gambadoro reported that Marte had been seen Sunday at Arizona’s team hotel bar around 11 p.m. And by morning, Marte had been placed on the restricted list and was reportedly headed back to Phoenix for an MRI on his knee.
Much is still unknown about what caused Marte to miss the game, how the miscommunication between Marte and the team occurred, and the nature of Marte’s knee injury. D’Backs fans, though, are used to these sorts of situations around their baseball star.
Torey Lovullo appeared to get emotional during the postgame when answering questions about Ketel Marte
He made clear Ketel is ok, but all he knows at this moment is he is dealing with a personal matter pic.twitter.com/nVCFVUgxVG
— Logan
(@phxlogan) August 18, 2026
Exactly a year ago, another Arizona Sports host, Dan Bickley, defended the station’s reporting on teammates’ frustration with Marte’s constant time off. The second baseman has somewhat inexplicably missed games in each of the past four seasons, including the entire first series after the 2025 All-Star break, when his Dominican Republic home was reportedly burglarized.
And this week, Gambadoro doubled down on his criticism of Marte while articulating how the station has repeatedly been on the right side of history when it comes to the D’Backs star.
“There’s been a lot of damage done to this organization by Ketel Marte. There really has, and it’s all coming to light now,” Gambadoro said Tuesday on the Burns & Gambo Show.
“And again, all those people who were in Ketel’s corner and all those people that were [saying], ‘You’re just trying to run the best player out of town,’ no, we weren’t. None of us were trying to run him out of town. We were just painting a picture for you of what’s happening. He’s a very talented player, but he’s one of the most difficult players to manage in all of sports.”
The story has become national news in part because of Marte’s track record with these situations, and because he was a trade target for the Red Sox this past year. Years of behind-the-scenes noise are seemingly coming to light as Marte’s performance has dipped and the fanbase’s patience has run out.
“He’s very much a selfish, individual player. I had somebody tell me he’s the most self-absorbed player that there is, and this is what happens,” Gambadoro said. “There’s no debating this.”
In his monologue, Gambadoro repeated his own reporting that Marte was seen at the Boston hotel bar with his “posse” the night before the game, a seeming example of the star’s questionable judgment. The longtime Phoenix radio host and insider ended by stating he wants Marte out.
“He did it in ’23, in ’24, and ’25; he has done stuff that is similar to this. This is four years in a row of this,” Gambadoro said. “I would send him home for the rest of the season, I’ll go to battle with guys that want to be here, and then I will open it up to make the best trade I can in the offseason.”
When local radio and podcast personalities report sports news, it can be difficult to separate fact from opinion. Gambadoro is certainly no exception here, given that his updates are interspersed with takes about how Arizona should get rid of Marte. Still, Arizona Sports has almost surely proven its track record on this story, and the opinion is backed up with years of evidence.
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