The Pirates have made a very clear judgment call, and it is hard to argue they were being sentimental about it. On July 23, 2026 at 3:35pm CDT, Pittsburgh designated Dennis Santana for assignment and acquired Ron Marinaccio. That is the kind of roster move that tells you exactly where a club thinks the value lies right now, and exactly where it no longer does.
It also tells you that Santana’s 2026 line had become impossible to ignore. The right-hander had been sitting on a 6.05 ERA across 41 2/3 innings before the Pirates pulled the plug. For a reliever who was tendered a 2026 contract at a $3.5 million salary, that is not a wobble, not a bad stretch, but a full-on warning light. Pittsburgh could wait as long as five days for trade interest, and the waiver process itself takes 48 hours, but the message from the move is already loud enough: this was no longer a bullpen arm the Pirates were prepared to keep trusting.
From useful in 2025 to vulnerable in 2026
The speed of the downturn is what makes this so stark. In 2025, Santana logged 70 1/3 innings out of the Pittsburgh bullpen and allowed just 2.18 earned runs per nine. That was the version of Santana who looked like a legitimate piece: a 22.2% strikeout rate, a 6.3% walk rate, a 3.21 FIP and a 3.68 SIERA. Even the.211 batting average on balls in play and 80.7% strand rate suggest a pitcher who had earned enough trust to stay in meaningful leverage work.
In 2026, that picture fell apart. Santana’s strikeout rate dropped to 19.9%, his walk rate climbed to 11.3%, and the ERA ballooned to 6.05. Once a reliever starts missing fewer bats and handing out more free passes, the rest tends to follow. The Pirates did not need a spreadsheet to see the problem, but the numbers make the decision look even cleaner.
Why the Pirates acted now
This is not a complicated roster story. Pittsburgh acquired Ron Marinaccio and designated Santana for assignment, which means the immediate bullpen hierarchy changed in one afternoon. Marinaccio is now the fresh arm, the pitcher the Pirates are choosing to bring in while Santana heads into a far less certain stretch of his career. If Santana clears waivers, he can reject an outright assignment and become a free agent while keeping the money owed to him. That is a neat summary of where this went wrong for Pittsburgh’s right-hander: one poor season does not erase the value of the previous one, but it can absolutely change how long a club is willing to wait.
The Pirates are not pretending this is anything other than a performance decision. Santana was better in 2025 than in 2026, and the gap was wide enough that the team chose movement over patience. In a bullpen, that is often the harshest verdict of all. You do not get many second chances when the results are this ugly and the role is this replaceable.
For Pittsburgh, the logic is brutally straightforward. Add Ron Marinaccio, move on from Dennis Santana, and accept that the reliever who looked useful a year ago no longer fit the picture. That is how quickly bullpen status can change. One season you are a trusted arm, the next you are staring at waiver territory and hoping someone else still sees a reason to believe.
