Infielder Cristian Santana has so far proved another cautionary tale about early breakouts for teemaged players, and the difficulty of sustaining that progress. Al Avila’s front office shelled out $2.95 million for the then 17-year-old back in the 2021 signing class. That was the largest bonus ever paid by the Detroit Tigers to an international free agent to that point. MLB Pipeline ranked Santana as their 14th best international prospect and he quickly tore up the Dominican Summer League. Prospect
hounds were frothing at the mouth by the time Santana came stateside in 2022 and he was already getting 45 and 45+ grades nationally at that point.
Santana moved to Florida for the 2022 season, and the Tigers quickly promoted him out of the Complex League to Single-A Lakeland. He walked a ton, hit nine homers in 80 games, and posted a 124 wRC+ as a very young hitter for that level. His approach and swing were already heavily geared to pull the ball in the air, and the prognosis looked reasonably good despite a lot of swing and miss against even mediocre breaking and offspeed stuff in the zone.
Since that point, Santana has done little but spin his wheels through any number of swing changes as the Tigers have tried to help him develop more of an up the middle approach and flatten his arc to the ball. Instead, he remains wildly pull heavy and tends to swing under just about everything. His barrel isn’t working through the hitting zone for very long, and while he will sometimes feast on pitches on the inner third, he has a lot of holes in his swing and produces a ton of weak contact in the air. Solid enough results against fastballs and the occasional tape measure shot aside, Santana’s main attribute at the plate these days is a good eye for the strike zone. That only helps so much when even middle-middle pitches are getting popped up to left field routinely. The quality of contact has got to improve, and he’s got to handle non-fastballs without piling up the whiffs. That’s a tall order, and one he hasn’t been able to fill in four seasons at the Single-A level.
This is what it looks like at his best. For about three weeks from late May to mid-June of 2025, Santana looked like he might be figuring things out. He launched six home runs in a span of eight games, and suddenly he had plenty of eyes turning his way again briefly. Then he disappeared again for 10 weeks before a couple of good games in September ended his season.
Physically, Santana has filled out his 5’11” frame and is now pretty stocky without much range or quickness for the third base position. The Tigers finally played him mainly at first base in 2025. None of this bodes well for his future, but despite it all Santana does have power and solid plate discipline, and he’s still only recently turned 22 years old. His story isn’t quite told in full yet, though he is definitely running out of time to change the narrative.
2026 is probably the last go around for Santana as an actual prospect unless things finally start to move in the right direction. After three seasons of work trying to improve his swing and approach, there are no signs of a big change coming. In 2025, he put 57.8 percent of his balls in play in the air, and 32.2 percent of them were pure pop-ups. In both 2023 and 2024 his fly ball rates were over 60 percent of balls in play, and that shows little sign of real improvement. Mix in a strikeout rate of 24.9 percent as a 21-year-old in Single-A, and you have a young player who clearly needs a major course correction. He walks, he has power, and while his range has declined he still packs a solid enough glove and arm combination. There just isn’t much to suggest that he’s any closer to making something out of his decent collection of tools than he was 2-3 years ago.
Currently Santana on a path similar to former hard hitting IFA signings like Adinso Reyes and Jose De La Cruz, who were never able to adapt to full season ball and make progress against what is still a fairly raw level of pitching overall. It doesn’t help at all that Santana is now likely a first baseman with everything riding on his bat. There’s still an imaginable future where he starts making more good contact and cuts down the strikeouts. At that point the power might start to play enough to allow him to keep advancing toward the upper levels of the system, but the window of opportunity is getting pretty narrow.
Hopefully there’s a sense of urgency from Santana this offseason and results to follow, as his bonus number and above average raw power aren’t going to protect him much longer. If he can’t make significant progress in 2026, and finally move up and show some progress at the High-A level, his time in the organization might run out.
