As the Cincinnati Reds continue to trim the margins of their roster ahead of both administrative needs and the chance to acquire other players for 2026, Reiver Sanmartin will officially have a new club
going forward.
Sanmartin, a 29 year old lefty, was claimed by the San Francisco Giants on Thursday afternoon. Alex Pavlovic of NBC Sports Bay Area relayed the news on Twitter.
Sanmartin originally came to the Reds in the same deal that sent Sonny Gray to Cincinnati from the New York Yankees, a deal that saw Shed Long, Jr. head the other direction priorto the 2019 season. He eventually made his big league debut during the 2021 season with 11.2 innings of impressive work in a pair of starts (as a starter, obviously), but struggled thereafter and eventually moved to the bullpen.
He missed more than a year recovering from Tommy John surgery, but finally worked his way back to the big league level in 2025 after some two years, tossing 1.2 IP in a lone appearance with the Reds in early September.
Sanmartin joins the likes of Santiago Espinal and Ian Gibaut in having been placed on waivers to get them off the roster this fall, though the previous two went unclaimed and rejected their minor league assignments to become free agents. Sanmartin is still cheap, though – he’s not yet arb-eligible – meaning teams were much more likely to take a flier on him on the waiver process.
Losing Sanmartin was just part of a larger day of transactions for the Reds, who welcomed each of Carson Spiers, Rhett Lowder, Brandon Williamson, Tyler Callihan, and Julian Aguiar back off the 60-day IL, each of whom needed valuable 40-man roster spots going forward. The Reds noted those moves on Twitter this afternoon, as well as informing the masses that they’d promoted RHP Jose Franco to the 40-man, outrighted RHP Sam Benschoter off the 40-man to AAA Louisville, and claimed RHP Roddery Muñoz off waivers from the St. Louis Cardinals.
Muñoz, 25, originally signed with the Atlanta Braves back in 2018, and he’s bounced around through the waiver process through Washington, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis before now finding himself on the Reds roster. He is out of options and owns a 6.73 ERA in 93.1 IP at the big league level in his career, and while he walks people more often than anyone would care to admit, he does have some strikeout stuff to his name, too. My best guess here is that the Reds will again try to pass him through waivers and keep him in their system as depth seeing as he’s out of options, and if they lose him, they lose him.
Jose Franco, meanwhile, is a guy they were likely going to promote to the 40-man to protect for the Rule 5 Draft next month anyway. At 24, he plowed through AA and AAA hitters to the tune of a.311 ERA in 110.0 IP, in which time he fanned 118 against 54 walks. Given his success at the AAA level last year, he’s very much in the mix for his first taste of big league action in 2026.
