Many of you don’t get it, but baseball is a wonderful laboratory for general ethics problems, revelations and teachable moments. To wit…
Ketel Marte, 32, is one of the top second basemen in baseball, indeed one of the top players in the game at any position. However, Marte failed to show up for a game last week with his team, the Arizona Diamondbacks in the middle of a pennant race. He deserted his team mates without letting anyone connected with the Diamondbacks know the reason for his absence or his whereabouts for more than 24 hours. His manager, Torey Lovullo, said he was dealing with “personal problems,” then Marte was determined to be injured and was placed on the injured list. Cameras subsequently caught him enjoying himself at a casino. This isn’t the first time Marte has gone AWOL either: he did it last season too.
The Athletic, which serves as the New York Times captive sports service, asked Diamondbacks General Manager Mike Hazen why the Diamondbacks tolerate Marte’s behavior. The answer made me nauseous.
“He’s an extremely talented player,” Hazen said Wednesday. “At some point, there’s a balance between what you are willing to deal with to get a level of production that can win you baseball games. We’re in the business of winning baseball games.”
No, no no.
Ethics Alarms 
Kettle is an odd duck. He may just be a spoiled, Hispanic, princeling baby hot dog. He’s definitely corrosive and a problem, potentially. Personally, watching him all the time, I think he’s over-rated. He seems to disappoint more often than he delivers in the clutch. Not that I am conversant in such things, but I see his WAR is 1.7. I’m guessing he will get traded this coming off season. Unfortunately, probably to the Padres, who, unlike the Diamondbacks, seem to have substantial financial resources. Or, maybe the Yankees or the Mets will take him if he’s as good as everyone says he is.
Fortunately, I don’t think he’s created a clubhouse problem. I think the rest of the team is sympathetic to what Marte has done to management and ownership. The Diamondbacks are building toward the future with a lot of young players. They aren’t going to get the third NL wildcard.
Another dynamic working in favor of the team not being torn up by Kettle’s shenanigans: The team is largely Hispanic, as is the team’s leadership. Gerardo Perdomo is reputedly the team leader. I think he and the other Hispanic guys, Eduardo Rodriquez in particular, can prevent the situation from metastisizing.
All that being said, putting on your management consultant hat, what would you advise Hazen and Luvullo and Derrick Hall to do about the situation Kettle?
Get rid of him. A resource that you can’t rely on isn’t a resource. Right now all they can do is pt him on waivers and hope someone is desperate enough to take on his salary. I can’t think of a single example of one of these situations that worked out well. Carl Everett? Puig?
The season is February to October. Roughly four months to recover, regroup, relax, travel, enjoy. You’d think that young, fit athletes could manage to show up for 162 games. No? Do their contracts not address issues like this? I thought MLB players absolutely love that they are paid extraordinary amounts of money to play a game! Is he really so valuable they can’t punish this guy? Random thoughts, but what the hell?!
Back in the day, that’s exactly what players were expected to do. Everyday players played, well, every day, or nearly so. But teams no longer expect their players to play each and every day — 162 games is a rarity, although teams will hope that their regulars will play in 150 something games a year. Additionally teams have days off regularly, probably between 20 and 30 over the course of a six month season.
One of the jobs that managers have is to keep track of their players and make sure they don’t get over worked, if possible, and don’t get burned out. So the managers will schedule days off for the players, even the super stars.
But. There are limits. Clubs today carry 13 position players (and 13 pitchers), so 9 start each game with 4 on the bench. One of those bench players will be a catcher, and managers don’t want to replace their catcher without good reason (what if the backup catcher then gets hurt?), which brings you down to 3 pinch hitters.
All that said, if you’re paying someone $30 million per year, you do that because you expect him to make a major contribution to your club. That means he really needs to play almost every game. You’re also expected to lead by example — there are always young kids on the team that look to the veterans for inspiration.
If you’ve just got to have a day off, I am sure the manager will arrange it, for the most part.
Which is also why Cal Ripken’s consecutive games played streak is now in the “will never be broken” column. (Of course, they said that about the record Cal broke too.)