Noelvi Marte is out of an everyday job in Cincinnati, a slide that has turned one of the most recognizable names from the Luis Castillo trade into a part-time player. Marte is in a right field platoon with Will Benson, and the move comes after a rough start in which he has gone 3-for-20 this year.
The numbers behind the demotion are hard to ignore. Marte has a.566 OPS against lefties for his career and is a.251 hitter with a.685 OPS through 747 major league plate appearances. Four years ago, he was included in the trade that sent Luis Castillo to Seattle, when he began that season as MLB Pipeline's No. 11 prospect and the Mariners' No. 2 prospect behind Julio Rodríguez. That profile made him one of the central pieces of the deal, the kind of player teams usually build around, not cycle through a platoon.
His path since then has been uneven. In 2023, Marte made a promising debut, only to receive an 80-game suspension for performance-enhancing drugs the following March. By August 24 last year, he was hitting.300 with an.856 OPS, a line that suggested the breakout was finally arriving. Since then, though, he has hit.187 with 49 strikeouts and eight walks over 37 games, and the reduced playing time this season does not fully explain why the bat has gone so quiet.
Read Also: Astros - Mariners: Castillo set to start as McCullers looms in Seattle
For Cincinnati, that leaves Marte at a crossroads. A player once viewed as one of the main returns for Luis Castillo now has to fight for at-bats while the organization waits to see whether the early promise was the real version or just the first glimpse of a talent still trying to settle in.
