{"id":553014,"date":"2026-02-03T21:59:25","date_gmt":"2026-02-03T21:59:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/553014\/"},"modified":"2026-02-03T21:59:25","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T21:59:25","slug":"arizona-diamondbacks-to-sign-carlos-santana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/553014\/","title":{"rendered":"Arizona Diamondbacks to sign Carlos Santana"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Diamondbacks filled another spot on the roster, with the news this afternoon that the team will be signing first baseman Carlos Santana. According to John Gambadoro<\/a>, the deal is a one-year one, worth approximately $2 million. Santana certainly brings experience, turning 40 in April. He was originally signed by the Dodgers in 2004 – the youngest man on our 40-man roster, Jose Fernandez, hadn\u2019t even reached his first birthday at that point – and reached the majors in 2010. Since then, he has accumulated over twenty-two hundred games, and the Diamondbacks will be the ninth franchise for which Santana has played.<\/p>\n

Santana is likely here more for his defense than his offense. He\u2019s a switch-hitter, though both historically and last year, has typically hit left-handed pitching a little better. In 2025 though, that was still comfortably below a .700 OPS against both types. But his defense still seems to measure up well, and he\u2019s going to be a good veteran presence in the clubhouse. Potential long-term occupant of the position, Tyler Locklear, could learn a lot from Santana, when Locklear comes back from injury. Given the defense-based basis for the veteran\u2019s presence on the roster, I imagine he will be playing at first on Opening Day, potentially moving Pavin Smith to DH, though some platooning is possible.<\/p>\n

This does likely also put an end to the possibility of Paul Goldschmidt returning to the Diamondbacks. This always seemed like a bit of a long shot, with Goldy looking for a full-time job, and probably also outside of the team\u2019s price range. Santana is a relatively cheap signing in comparison, although is probably not the one you would expect from a team with genuine aspirations at contention in 2025. There will need to be a 40-man spot opened up for him, but with the number of players the team has on the IL, I don\u2019t foresee that as being any kind of a problem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Diamondbacks filled another spot on the roster, with the news this afternoon that the team will be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":553015,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[14273,5,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-553014","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-arizona-diamondbacks-news","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-mlb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116008948228273868","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=553014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553014\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/553015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=553014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=553014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=553014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}