This Ketel Marte Thing Is Getting Strange

The Arizona Diamondbacks either have an injured cleanup hitter, a truancy problem, a communications dysfunction, some mysterious and possibly sinister fourth thing, or all of the above.

Well, there's a sixth possibility.

They don't mind taking a beat writer for a ride now and then to preserve clubhouse tranquility.

But let's take that as a given because that's what a beat writer is for: to toss under the bus when you want the driver to stop.

Anyway, one of their best players, second baseman and designated hitter Ketel Marte, skipped Monday night's 11-1 loss in Boston after going through the bother of flying there from Atlanta with his teammates.

This led Arizona Republic beat writer Nick Piecoro, a responsible sort with two decades of said responsibility in the job to prove it, to X this: