Marte, Arenado drill 2 HRs each at cozy Camden in opener against Orioles

BALTIMORE -- The Diamondbacks took the field at Oriole Park at Camden Yards for only the 13th time in club history on Monday night. Ketel Marte and Nolan Arenado probably wish they’d visit a lot more often.

Marte and Arenado each homered twice against the Orioles in the opener of the third and final series of Arizona's nine-game East Coast swing, one that eventually ended in a 9-7 loss after the D-backs bullpen yielded a big lead.

The pair has now connected on 12 combined Camden Yards home runs, in only 27 career games between them.

“I like it here a lot,” Arenado conceded after his seventh and eighth roundtrippers in 20 games in Baltimore. “Now that they’ve moved the fences back in, I like it a lot more. But no, it’s a really cool ballpark. … I’ve always really enjoyed this ballpark for some reason.”

Marte has four homers on the season, all coming on the road with three in the last three games. He is slashing ..212/.278/.424 following Monday’s game.

Arenado’s were the first of what has so far been a frustrating 2026 campaign. And the possibility he might be turning a corner could make Monday’s frustrating loss -- in which D-backs relievers allowed seven runs in 2 2/3 -- easier to take.

The 34-year-old, eight-time All-Star is still slashing just .204/.214/.333.

“I think every day it’s gotten better, starting in Philly [our previous series]," Arenado said. “Even though that series wasn’t very good. Sometimes it happens overnight. Sometimes it doesn’t. For me it hasn’t happened overnight. It’s just been a slow progression, slowly trying to work on getting this thing right. A lot of conversations, a lot of tinkering. And today was cool to see it come to fruition.”

Marte absolutely demolished the first pitch of the night from Orioles starter Dean Kremer for his 15th career leadoff home run, then followed that with another solo shot two innings later for his first multihomer game since June 3 last year.

The first shot, the bombastic result of a swing at Kremer’s 93.5 mph fastball well above the zone, traveled a Statcast-projected 443 feet, making it the first Eutaw Street HR of the season and first clubbed by a D-backs player.

The ball was 3.70 feet off the ground when Marte made contact, making it the second-highest pitch he had taken deep in his career.

The second, measured at a Statcast-projected 405 feet, apparently fell a few feet shy of Marte becoming the second player in ballpark history to reach Eutaw Street twice in one game.

Arenado got in on the act in the fourth and sixth innings to plate five runs total.

Like Marte, Arenado also went after one of Kremer’s elevated fastballs in the fourth, pulling it deep enough in left that it would’ve cleared the walls even before the Orioles moved the fences back in before last season.

“I just tried to stay back, and I was able to clear on a high heater, which was a great sign,” Arenado said. “It’s pretty lively at the top, but like I said, I was able to get to it. So it was great.”

Two frames later, he sent Albert Suárez’s hanging cutter back into the Orioles' bullpen that the veteran had just departed.

But in summer-like temperatures, the ball carried just as well for the home team. Jeremiah Jackson hit a grand slam off Taylor Rashi and a solo shot off Andrew Hoffman. In between, Pete Alonso’s two-run connection off Jonathan Loáisiga (0-1) meant Ryne Nelson’s solid start went for naught.

The collapse abruptly halted a four-game scoreless stretch for manager Torey Lovullo’s bullpen.

“We felt very good about those matchups, and that’s what’s so puzzling about this,” Lovullo admitted. “But we’ll figure it out.”