Yankees DFA reliever Enyel De Los Santos, promote Will Warren

At the 2024 Trade Deadline, Yankees general manager Brian Cashman added three players: infielder Jazz Chisholm Jr. and relievers Mark Leiter Jr. and Enyel De Los Santos. We’re not even two weeks in August, and we’re already almost at worst-case scenario mode.

Leiter has taken his bumps in the last two games, but has at least flashed potential to help the bullpen. Chisholm started red-hot before sustaining an ugly UCL injury on Monday that might cost him his season. As for De Los Santos? He’s already gone.

The Yankees needed a roster spot on Wednesday night to promote Will Warren from Triple-A. The doubleheader on Saturday meant that the Yankees needed an extra starter, so Warren will return for a third turn in the rotation. The problem was that they couldn’t use Chisholm’s roster spot for Warren due to rules limiting the number of pitchers on a roster to 13. So with starter Luis Gil and seemingly capable reliever Jake Cousins the only two arms with options, the Yankees had to instead go the DFA route.

The weakest link in the bullpen was somehow already De Los Santos. The move has been announced, in addition to the already-reported news of Oswald Peraza’s return.

When the Yankees picked up De Los Santos from San Diego at the Trade Deadline in exchange for minor-league speedster Brandon Lockridge, they hoped that they could tweak him back to the form that saw him become a mostly reliable arm out of the Cleveland bullpen from 2022-23.

If you’ve missed the first half of August, you might be wondering why the Yankees are cutting ties with De Los Santos so soon. Well, he only pitched five games for them, and Baseball Reference conveniently lays out how his appearances gradually got worse.

Baseball Reference

The last one, on Monday, was a real doozy, turning a close game into a laugher against the worst team in baseball. By the time his pitch count got into the forties, it became clear that the Yankees were probably just using him as a warm body. They already knew that they needed this roster spot for Warren.

The nicest thing we’ll say is that at least the Yankees didn’t waiting around too long to admit defeat on this deal. Demoting Gil or Cousins — even just for a week and change — would have been getting too cute just to see if they could make De Los Santos work. It wasn’t happening. C’est la vie.