{"id":763188,"date":"2026-06-27T06:39:18","date_gmt":"2026-06-27T06:39:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/763188\/"},"modified":"2026-06-27T06:39:18","modified_gmt":"2026-06-27T06:39:18","slug":"d-backs-release-carlos-santana-mlb-trade-rumors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/763188\/","title":{"rendered":"D-Backs Release Carlos Santana – MLB Trade Rumors"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Diamondbacks officially released veteran first baseman Carlos Santana<\/a>, according to the MLB.com transaction log<\/a>. That was expected after he was designated for assignment on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Santana signed a $2MM free agent deal leading up to Spring Training. A switch-hitter who is better from the right side, he signed to take a short side platoon job alongside\u00a0Pavin Smith<\/a>. Santana only played in eight games before suffering an adductor strain on April 5. He spent the next two and a half months on the injured list.<\/p>\n

The D-Backs sent Santana on a rehab assignment on June 5. Position players can spend up to 20 days working back from an injury in the minors. The D-Backs would\u2019ve needed to activate him on Thursday but instead opted to move on. Santana had hit .083 in 10 rehab games with Triple-A Reno and had a matching batting average over 26 big league plate appearances before the injury.<\/p>\n

Santana is free to sign with any team if he intends to continue playing. The 40-year-old might be limited to minor league contracts. He\u2019s still a quality defender but hit just .219\/.308\/.325 across 474 plate appearances between the Guardians and Cubs last year.<\/p>\n

Smith missed a couple months with an elbow injury. He\u2019s back now and playing first base against right-handed pitching.\u00a0LuJames Groover<\/a> got the start there against Cards lefty\u00a0Matthew Liberatore<\/a> on Wednesday. Utilityman Ildemaro Vargas<\/a> has gotten the majority of the playing time on the season. Arizona first basemen have an MLB-worst .217\/.261\/.318 slash line. The D-Backs are a game above .500 at the halfway point and should look for an upgrade before the trade deadline.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Diamondbacks officially released veteran first baseman Carlos Santana, according to the MLB.com transaction log. That was expected…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":763189,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,65951,591,85],"class_list":["post-763188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-carlos-santana","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/763188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=763188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/763188\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/763189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=763188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=763188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=763188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}