The infielder has regressed for two seasons, but remains young enough to finally put it together at the plate.
We’ve had some misses over the years in our Detroit Tigers prospect rankings. Wilmer Flores and Peyton Graham come to mind. Another young player who burst on the scene but has since regressed or simply failed to develop is infielder Cristian Santana. Unlike the injuries that sapped the other names, Santana has had more trouble making some swing changes and just hasn’t been able to get any traction at the Low-A level. Fortunately, he’s only recently turned 21 years old so there’s still a little time left for him to start making some tangible progress.
Santana was signed as an international free agent out of the Dominican Republic as a 16-year-old back in 2021. He drew a $2.95M bonus, which was a record for the Tigers at the time. After sitting out the pandemic season, he impressed in the Dominican Summer League the next season and basically jumped right past Complex level ball straight to playing for the Low-A Lakeland Flying Tigers in 2022.
That summer, Santana cracked nine home runs in 80 games as an 18-year-old while walking a whopping 15.9 percent of the time. He struck out quite a bit as well and had some trouble popping up a lot of balls, but at his age that was a striking performance and saw him rocketing up prospect lists at the end of the 2022 season.
Unfortunately, the issues persisted while the performance did not. In 2023, as a 19-year-old, he hit 12 homers in 97 games and walked an astounding 21.7 percent of the time, but he continued to strike out a lot and when he didn’t crush the baseball, he made little but weak contact on the ground and in the air. The Tigers sent him back to the Complex League briefly to make some adjustments, but it didn’t take and things were even more all or nothing as he repeated Low-A again in 2024.
He walked in 23.7 percent of his plate appearances last year, continuing to show a solid eye for the zone, but his contact ability did not improve, and much of time it looked more like passivity than real selectivity in his swing decisions. Unless he got a meatball, he often just waited pitchers out, which is a departure from his first two seasons, but not really much of an improvement. The result was that he often fell behind in counts, and he struck out 33.3 percent of the time against the same class of pitchers he’d faced the year prior.
Santana did hit seven homers in 55 games, but injuries bit him and he missed a month in May and June. The rest of the season the Tigers tried to give him more days off to work with coaches, and even put him on the development list at the beginning of September to keep working outside of game action. He got to the power again in July and August, continuing to walk a ton, but the persistent weak contact and strikeouts continued despite him posting a combined OPS near .835 over the final two months of his season.
The plate discipline and developing average power in an infielder who can play either second or third base remains somewhat compelling. However, he’s still pretty mistake prone in the field, and his the struggles to make adjustments in his swing mechanics have really taken the shine off his prospect status. He’s still younger than a lot of players who will be drafted this July, but he’s got to start making some progress in his age 21 season.
The issue for Santana continues to be an uppercut swing, poor barrel control, and an approach overly geared toward pulling the baseball. He hits a ton of flyballs, but he’s a rare case where it’s gone too far because he’s swinging under most of them and selling out to pull everything. High fastballs have given him fits and he’s posted an infield flyball rate over 34 percent each of the past two seasons while also serving a ton of routine fly balls to the outfield.
There are multiple components in play here. First, Santana needs to get stronger and quicker to the ball. In 2024, he improved on his tendency to lunge at the ball and get caught out front. but there was still a lack of barrel control despite his improved lower half. Some of this is swing mechanics, as despite a pretty balanced cut now he still tends to open his front side to try to hoist everything to the pull field and really dips his back shoulder a lot. The result is he doesn’t keep the barrel through the hitting zone long, and can’t cover pitches on the outer half of the strike zone or above the belt. The results are quite all or nothing, and usually the latter.
On the plus side, he’s a very young middle infielder who is already approaching average power. He knows what he does well, and his discipline allows him to take a ton of pitches waiting for something he can drive. The problem is that his lack of plate coverage allows better pitchers to work his cold zones pretty comfortably, putting Santana in bad counts and forcing him to offer at pitchers’ pitches. There’s a fine line between discipline, and simply being unable to drive anything that isn’t down on the inner half and knowing it. He really needs to break out of his patterns, and so far has been unwilling or unable to do so.
As a defender, Santana has the physical ability to be fringe average at both second and third base. He’s still playing plenty of shortstop as well, but despite a solid arm doesn’t really have the range and smooth actions to stick there long-term. He’s gotten stronger as he’s filled out the past two seasons, but he could stand to rebuild some of the quickness lost as he’s added muscle to his frame. As a defender, his real issue is just a tendency to boot or throw away a ball too often. He’s got to be more focused and measured to cut down on the mistakes, but that maturity hasn’t developed yet.
2025 Outlook
Right now it’s hard to see a major league future for Santana other than perhaps as a utility infielder who can hit left-handed pitching. He has the raw tools in terms of power, plate discipline, and defensive utility to be a useful player eventually, but two years trying to overcome the same issues says that things need to change pretty quickly or it just isn’t going to happen.
He’s only 21 years old, and was thrown into the fire a lot earlier than most hitters with his tendencies, so it’s worth having some patience with him. However, he’s also spent two full seasons at the Low-A level and done a bunch of extra work on his swing without too much in the way of results in his contact. The Tigers patience may be running thin as he doesn’t seem to be making the necessary adjustments.
2025 should be pretty telling for him. The Tigers can’t keep him in Lakeland forever, and so he’s likely to spend most of this season at High-A West Michigan facing pitchers with better control who can exploit his issues. He’s remained a modestly productive hitter for two years largely by taking advantage of young pitchers with poor control. If he can’t adapt to a new level this season and start showing better barrel control and plate coverage, his selective approach isn’t going to do him any good. A short future as an org guy awaits down that path, with no major league future possible.
