Is former Cincinnati Reds Prospect Noelvi Marte Done After Latest Move?

When he was sent down this year, 2026, hitting almost 400 in Triple-A, he was chasing 37% of the time, walking under 7%. Both would be single-digit percentile in Major League Baseball. So if you can't have success with that in the minors, then I don't know how you're ever going to find success in the majors. And Jacob Tisson is a big Noel Vemarte fan. Big, big, big. He has seven Marte jerseys and a bunch of different... Two of them. Okay, so I rounded it up to seven. You still have two. Yeah. We switched numbers. From what to what? 16 to 4. 16? Oh, yeah, he did have 16. I forgot about that. Yeah, didn't help. It didn't help. He should have made four other changes. And I think that's a theme here. If he had made other changes, then maybe he'd still be up. Instead, he was sent to Triple-A this week. Yeah, on a team that is consistently devoid of overall talent, I grasp onto a guy who was one of the most talented guys in this organization. He was traded for by Luis Castillo Trade when they sent Castillo to the Mariners. That deadline where they sold basically that entire core to rebuild for the L.E. era. And when Marte got here, he was the number one prospect in the organization above Elie De La Cruz. And the expectations were very, very high. As a top-30 prospect in all of baseball, he's never really lived up to it. Part of that is he's never played a true position. He played third base all the way through the minors, came up, played it for about a year and a half, and then was moved to right field where he struggled defensively at first until he figured it out a little bit towards the end of last year. And then this year, the big reason he could never stay in the lineup was his lack of success at the plate. Really struggled to hit. Struggled to have a really good idea of where the zone was. Couldn't find a way to lay off balls outside of the zone. And was chasing higher than almost any player in baseball. Never fixed it. And now he's back in Triple-A, thinking that the Noelvin Marte era might be over. Yeah, I agree. I think that when you look at these quotes that he had and the messaging that we've seen about Marte, it's really been a theme. And there's a disconnect somewhere. And so this is from May when he was sent down and Jacob Tissett literally had to buy three boxes of Kleenexes because he was crying so much. The only thing that I'm working on his pitch is that I want to swing at. If I'm able to do that, everything else is going to play out. And this quote was courtesy of Charlie Goldsmith. And so there you go. So he's got to work on what he's swinging at. Very, very simple. Terry Francona on August 18th, right? Three months and five days later. We asked him how he thought it was going. He said, not very well. I said, this is just kind of a pivotal time for you. Don't just go down. He's probably going to find ways to get hits in Triple-A. You've got to play with some urgency and get after it. Urgency. Find a way to pick and choose which pitches. Be more patient. We will see. But Charlie Goldsmith with both of those quotes. But there's a disconnect somewhere if he's still working on the same thing. Hasn't shown any growth despite dominating Triple-A when he was there earlier this season. Yeah, and I would say if there's that type of level of disconnect where he still needs to work on, you know, the chase rate and swinging at good pitches. He probably just should have stayed down there in Triple-A for a little bit longer instead of getting called up when he did. Well, Jacob was going to cry more and more because even you would reset. Marte hitting 382 in Triple-A. Then what happened? He was hitting up over 400 in Triple-A before he got called up. But the alarming part about that success and what Francona is saying there in the back half of the quote is he's going to find a way to get hits in Triple-A because he's so much more talented than the average player in Triple-A. When he was sent down this year, 2026, hitting almost 400 in Triple-A, he was chasing 37% of the time, walking under 7%. Both would be single-digit percentile in Major League Baseball. So if you can't have success with that in the minors, then I don't know how you're ever going to find success in the majors. This year, it's his worst season in terms of chase rate. 41% up from 33% in 2025 and 37% the year before. This is a guy that just has not improved the one thing that's preventing him from being a consistent player. You see that average at 189 and you think it doesn't matter what he swings at because he's not going to be able to get hits anyway. Well, he only sees about 43% of balls in the zone because they know he's going to swing at balls in the other's batter's box. It's incredibly frustrating for a guy that when he makes contact, he can send it into the bleachers, he can find success, but he's not a threat at the plate anymore. He hasn't been for almost two years now. The success we saw when he came up his rookie year and hit over 300 in about 50 games, that's not been there since then. Part of it's the steroid suspension, part of it's battling back through a position change there, and I don't know how many more opportunities he'll have in this organization if he can't fix something as alarming as a chase rate. I just don't learn to hit a breaking ball like they throw... Or lay off of one. But that's what I mean. Learn to see a breaking ball. That's a better way, not hit. Learn to see it. To make them throw it in the zone and to not have any path to that this year, knowing that's your issue, that's tough. I would end up, and maybe it takes away his aggressiveness in general and hurts him as an overall hitter, keep the bat on your shoulder for a bit until you can really see it. And if you're striking out looking, you'd almost rather that for a little bit so he can get more plate discipline. I don't know. This is a guy that, when we talked about the Joey Votto stuff yesterday, it's like, man, can Joey... Because he's the most disciplined, had the best eye ever. But honestly, that's how Stewart does, and he's here now. He's a rookie, right? So sometimes it's just natural and it's part of your instincts as a baseball player, and he clearly does not have that. And that's why he hasn't delivered and why those jerseys in your closet are going to be collecting a little dust. Yeah, they're buried now. Buried? I got other ones on top of them. Well, they're just in the bottom of the jersey drawer. Oh, okay. Could you put it past him? Okay, yeah. Like, burying a jersey, he's like 189, gets the shot. Overreact it and show a little bit of dramatics? What? No, definitely not. Never me. But I think a lot of people were hoping, at the very least, Marte's an everyday player. I mean, the goal was obviously to be a part of the core with Elie De La Cruz, and he's one of the star players on this team, but I think at least most people expected the floor to be that he's a guy you can rely on to play every day in this lineup. He's a top 30 overall prospect. When's the Reds got him? And now he's been sent back to AAA with a negative 1.2 war for his career up with the Reds. Negative 1.2. Yeah. That and the 189 batting average. I'm a batting average guy still. I get it. No one cares about batting average anymore. Don't be hitting $1.89. That sounds like a sale of my favorite chips. Cheetos Flamin' Hots, baby. Yeah, and now that he's struggling at the plate and unable to hit, we've seen it trickle into other parts of his game, which is incredibly frustrating for a player that needs to keep working on a new position. He's been lots of days going right field. He's not running after balls. He's throwing to the cutoff man when there's opportunities to get guys out at second. It's been a story all season long about him not being locked in, it seems, in the outfield, and part of that is the hitting and how much he struggled there. That's what he's hung his hat on his whole career throughout the minor leagues, and now you're playing a new position. It's hard to focus on that when you need to focus on what you've been good at your whole life. I think it's affected him overall and made him just a significantly worse player than what he could be in a different situation, and that's why he needs to stay in AAA now for a long time. Don't look at the numbers. Don't look at the average. He should be there the rest of this year. Let him figure it out. It doesn't matter if he's hitting .400, if he's chasing 35% of the time. He needs to fix that before he comes back up. I'm not going to be fooled by a couple 450 feet home runs this time. I mean, he hit them last time, and every time he was breaking records in AAA, I wanted him back up here because no one on the reds could hit either. He couldn't do it in the majors, so he needs to figure it out in AAA.