{"id":729590,"date":"2026-06-19T00:06:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T00:06:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/729590\/"},"modified":"2026-06-19T00:06:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T00:06:12","slug":"santiago-espinal-elects-free-agency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/729590\/","title":{"rendered":"Santiago Espinal Elects Free Agency"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/e\/espinsa01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.mlbtraderumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2026-06-18_br\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Santiago Espinal<\/a> has cleared waivers and elected free agency, according to the MLB.com <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.mlb.com\/player\/santiago-espinal-669289\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">transaction log<\/a>. The Dodgers designated the veteran infielder for assignment on Tuesday when\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/e\/edmanto01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.mlbtraderumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2026-06-18_br\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Tommy Edman<\/a> returned from injury.<\/p>\n<p>Espinal has been outrighted twice this season. The first came when\u00a0<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/h\/hernaen02.shtml\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Kik\u00e9 Hern\u00e1ndez<\/a> returned from the injured list. Hern\u00e1ndez quickly went back down with injury, so the Dodgers re-signed Espinal as soon he cleared waivers. The roster fit is tougher with Edman back, as it\u2019d probably require the utilityman accepting a minor league deal and reporting to Triple-A Oklahoma City.<\/p>\n<p>A glove-first infielder, Espinal impressed the Dodgers on a non-roster invite to Spring Training. He hit .268 in 36 games this year but only walked once and recorded four extra-base hits. Espinal had a couple league average offensive seasons with the Blue Jays from 2021-22. He\u2019s a .247\/.296\/.328 hitter in more than 1000 trips to the plate over the past four seasons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Santiago Espinal has cleared waivers and elected free agency, according to the MLB.com transaction log. The Dodgers designated&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":712360,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[5,4,1552],"class_list":["post-729590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-baseball","tag-mlb","tag-santiago-espinal"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116773859073561071","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729590","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=729590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729590\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/712360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=729590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=729590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=729590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}