{"id":735830,"date":"2026-06-26T06:12:28","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T06:12:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/735830\/"},"modified":"2026-06-26T06:12:28","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T06:12:28","slug":"royals-release-luke-jackson-mlb-trade-rumors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/735830\/","title":{"rendered":"Royals Release Luke Jackson &#8211; MLB Trade Rumors"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Royals released right-handers\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/search\/search.fcgi?pid=jackslu01,jackso008luk&amp;search=Luke+Jackson&amp;utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.mlbtraderumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2026-06-25_br\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Luke Jackson<\/a> and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/search\/search.fcgi?pid=sanchaa01,sanche002aar&amp;search=Aaron+Sanchez&amp;utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.mlbtraderumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2026-06-25_br\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Aaron Sanchez<\/a> from minor league contracts this week, according to the MiLB.com <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.milb.com\/omaha\/roster\/transactions\/kansas-city-royals\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">transaction tracker<\/a>. Kansas City also announced Wednesday that they\u2019ve added infielder\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/v\/velazan01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.mlbtraderumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2026-06-25_br\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Andrew Velazquez<\/a> on a minor league deal.<\/p>\n<p>Jackson is the only of those three players who was in the big leagues as recently as last season. The 34-year-old reliever split the season between the Tigers, Braves and Rangers. Jackson combined for 52 appearances with a 4.06 earned run average. He walked nearly 13% of opponents and had a career-low 17.4% strikeout rate, which limited him to minor league offers last offseason.<\/p>\n<p>After spending the first six weeks in Triple-A with the Mets, Jackson triggered an opt-out. He signed with Kansas City in late May and made 10 appearances for their top affiliate in Omaha. Jackson had a 16:4 strikeout-to-walk ratio but allowed nine runs across 13 2\/3 innings. He has an ERA close to 6.00 in the minors this season.<\/p>\n<p>Sanchez signed his non-roster deal in January and was with the big league team in Spring Training. He\u2019d been working out of the Omaha rotation but was tagged for a 9.43 ERA across 13 appearances. Sanchez hasn\u2019t pitched in the majors since 2022 and was out of pro ball entirely last year. He\u2019ll turn 34 next Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>Velazquez, 32 next month, is three years removed from his most recent MLB appearance. He played in each season from 2018-23, hitting .189\/.244\/.293 in 275 games between five teams. Velazquez began this season in Triple-A with the Diamondbacks, where he had a .274\/.335\/.390 showing before being released in mid-June.<\/p>\n<p>Kansas City\u2019s only healthy position player on optional assignment is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/l\/lugoma01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.mlbtraderumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2026-06-25_br\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Matthew Lugo<\/a>, who was drafted as an infielder but hadn\u2019t played there since 2023. Lugo is mostly playing outfield with Omaha but has gotten a few looks at third base.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/d\/drurybr01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.mlbtraderumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2026-06-25_br\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Brandon Drury<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/n\/newmake01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.mlbtraderumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2026-06-25_br\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Kevin Newman<\/a> and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/t\/toroab01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.mlbtraderumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2026-06-25_br\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Abraham Toro<\/a> are all in the organization on minor league deals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Royals released right-handers\u00a0Luke Jackson and\u00a0Aaron Sanchez from minor league contracts this week, according to the MiLB.com transaction&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":735831,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2290],"tags":[51413,40690,5,443],"class_list":["post-735830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-baseball","tag-aaron-sanchez","tag-andrew-velazquez","tag-baseball","tag-luke-jackson"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116814934421793758","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735830","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=735830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735830\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/735831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=735830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=735830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=735830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}