The D-backs have come to an agreement on a one-year, $2 million deal with first baseman Carlos Santana, a source told MLB.com's Steve Gilbert on Tuesday. The club has not confirmed the move.
The addition of Santana, a switch-hitter, gives the Diamondbacks the complementary first baseman they had been looking for this winter to go along with the left-handed-hitting Pavin Smith.
A veteran of 16 MLB seasons with plenty of playoff experience under his belt, Santana is a former All-Star and Gold Glove Award winner who is the Majors’ active leader in walks with 1,330. He has a career .352 OPS and an above league average 112 OPS+.
Santana, who turns 40 on April 8, is coming off a season that was well below those standards he established for most of his lengthy MLB career. In 116 games with the Guardians (his third stint with Cleveland) and eight with the Cubs, the switch-hitter slashed .219/.308/.325 with 11 homers and a career-low 77 OPS+.
Santana was not eligible to receive a qualifying offer this offseason since he got one from Cleveland in 2017. Thus, there is no Draft pick compensation attached to him, or penalty for signing him.
Santana's offensive decline in 2025 was caused at least in part by the combination of a hard-hit rate (37.8 percent) that was the third-lowest of his career and a strikeout rate (19.2 percent) that was easily a career high. He also had a career-high 24.8 percent chase rate and a career-low 52.6 percent chase contact rate. It all resulted in a lack of production that led Cleveland to release him on Aug. 28 before he signed a free-agent deal with the Cubs on Sept. 1.
Still, there were times when Santana showed flashes of his former self with the bat. He hit 28 balls in play at 105.1 mph or higher last season, resulting in a .607 average on those swings. This included a season-high 113.2 mph single against the Red Sox on April 27. Santana also had 21 multi-hit games, including two three-hit games while with the Guardians. And notably, he still maintained a solid 11 percent walk rate, which ranked in MLB's 80th percentile.
Despite the offensive struggles in 2025, Santana remained an elite defender at first base. His eight Outs Above Average were the third-most among all MLB first basemen, as were his six runs prevented at the position.