Marlins without Starling Marte for the NLDS. And more on their roster for the series.
Outfielder Starling Marte, still dealing with a hand injury sustained during the wild-card round of the MLB playoffs, is not part of the Miami Marlins’ 28-man roster for their best-of-5 National League Division Series against the Atlanta Braves, which begins at 2:08 p.m. Tuesday.
Marte, acquired at the trade deadline from the Arizona Diamondbacks, left in the ninth inning of the Marlins’ 5-1 win over the Chicago Cubs on Wednesday to open the wild card series when he was hit in the left hand by by a 92.2-mph sinker from Cubs reliever Dan Winkler.
The official diagnosis was a small non-displaced fracture in the fifth metacarpal of his left hand, which is the base of the bone between the pinkie and the wrist.
The Marlins had been listing Marte as day-to-day. He has been wearing a protective brace and receiving daily treatment for swelling. Marte didn’t play in the 2-0 series-clinching win over the Cubs on Friday, but Marlins manager Don Mattingly said Sunday that Marte could have been used as a defensive replacement or pinch-runner against the Cubs in an emergency situation.
But with the need to have an extra pitcher on the roster for a five-game series, Marte not being 100 percent and the Marlins having other options to play center field (Lewis Brinson, Magneuris Sierra and Monte Harrison among them), the move made sense.
“Obviously a guy you don’t want to leave off your roster,” Mattingly said. “But we weren’t comfortable with what he was going to be able to do.”
Mattingly said Marte was disappointed.
“Nobody wants to be left off a postseason roster, and Starling’s a great competitor,” Mattingly said. “But the main thing in the conversation with him was he needed to be honest with us and tell us what he was comfortable with. And then we had to make that decision as we watched what he was trying to do out there. He did test a few different things [Monday], and we just weren’t comfortable with what we were seeing.”
Marte, the 31-year-old, one-time All-Star and two-time Gold Glove Award winner has been a steadying presence in center field and in the No. 2 spot of Miami’s lineup while helping fortify an offense that has looked sluggish at times.
He hit a go-ahead home run in his first game with the club, an eighth-inning rocket that went 438 feet to left-center field off Toronto Blue Jays reliever Shun Yamaguchi to clinch a 3-2 win on Sept. 1. He hit a bases-clearing double in the eighth inning against Phillies reliever Brandon Workman on Sept. 10 to set the stage for Jorge Alfaro’s ninth-inning walk-off single.
He also kept the Marlins’ seventh-inning rally going with a single after Corey Dickerson hit a go-ahead three-run home run. Jesus Aguilar brought Marte home with a home run of his own.
Marte has been hit three times on that hand this season, including Sunday’s regular-season finale when he left in the third inning against the Yankees with a left ear contusion, and been hit by pitches nine times combined between his time with the Marlins and Diamondbacks.
More NLDS roster notables
▪ The Marlins are carrying 14 pitchers for the NLDS, adding Nick Vincent and Dan Castano back to the active roster for the series against the Braves and dropping Stephen Tarpley back to the taxi squad.
▪ First baseman Lewin Diaz was swapped for utility player Sean Rodriguez.
This story was originally published October 6, 2020 at 11:21 AM.
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