Red Sox-Diamondbacks Mock Trades Somehow Still Haven't Died

Arizona Diamondbacks second baseman Ketel Marte Ketel Marte and Jarren Duran. Two players who weren't traded this offseason, unless you count the hundreds of times pundits and fans swapped them for each other on the internet. The Arizona Diamondbacks fielded calls on Marte for half of the winter, then pulled him off the table despite this year being the last chance they'd have to move on from him without his approval.

Meanwhile, Duran is a member of a Boston Red Sox outfield that very clearly has one too many bodies, but manager Alex Cora is insisting that he can make a playing time arrangement work for everyone. On Tuesday, Bleacher Report's Kerry Miller wrote up a series of hypothetical trades that he deemed feasible to happen either by opening day or in the early days of the regular season. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he pitched a swap of Marte for Duran, with the Diamondbacks also netting starting pitcher Kutter Crawford in the mock trade.

"Goodness knows there was plenty of speculation back during 'Winter Meetings SZN' about Boston's interest in adding three-time All-Star Marte to a questionable infield," wrote Miller. "Meanwhile, Marte is owed another $103. 5M over the next six years, and his full no-trade clause goes into effect at some point in April.

There actually might be a fair amount of 'now or never' motivation for Arizona to make this happen. " Nothing Miller says is "wrong," per se, but it's hard to envision the Diamondbacks switching course on trading Marte just weeks into the new season after very publicly declaring he wouldn't be all the way back in January. Marte is the clear-cut No.