EL PASO, Texas – Professional baseball can be a cutthroat business and El Pasoan Ivan Melendez found that out Thursday afternoon.<\/p>\n
Melendez was released by the Arizona Diamondbacks right in the middle of the organization’s Triple-A series against the El Paso Chihuahuas.<\/p>\n
Melendez was playing for the Reno Aces, the Triple-A affiliate of the Arizona Diamondbacks.<\/p>\n
The Aces were in the middle of a six-game series against the Chihuahuas, and it marked the first time Melendez got to play inside his hometown ballpark.<\/p>\n
Melendez was scheduled to meet with local media Thursday afternoon to talk about his return to El Paso, but Melendez never showed.<\/p>\n
At first a source told ABC-7 Melendez received news he was being moved down to Double-A and that he was no longer in El Paso. <\/p>\n
Hours later it was confirmed by the Aces that Melendez was released by the Diamondbacks.<\/p>\n
Melendez has been with the Diamondbacks organization since 2022. <\/p>\n
That was the year he was drafted by the Diamondbacks with the 43rd overall pick in the second round of the MLB draft.<\/p>\n
Melendez at the time was coming off a stellar collegiate career playing for the Texas Longhorns.<\/p>\n
He capped off his season with the Longhorns by winning the Golden Spikes Award, an award given to the best college baseball player.<\/p>\n
The Coronado grad worked his way up the Diamondbacks farm system and started the 2026 season with the Reno Aces.<\/p>\n
In his 45 at bats this season, Melendez was batting .222 with two home runs, and 8 RBIs.<\/p>\n
One of those home runs happened in El Paso during Wednesday’s game against the Chihuahuas.<\/p>\n
In his two appearances against the Chihuahuas this week Melendez was 2-for-7 with one home run and five RBIs.<\/p>\n
It will be interesting to see where Melendez’s career goes from here as he will most likely be picked up by another organization.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EL PASO, Texas – Professional baseball can be a cutthroat business and El Pasoan Ivan Melendez found that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":260716,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[138,140,139],"class_list":["post-263750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-el-paso","tag-el-paso","tag-el-paso-headlines","tag-el-paso-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263750\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/260716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}