The Chicago Cubs added Carlos Santana on Sunday, agreeing to a one-year contract with the veteran first baseman that puts him in the mix for the playoffs, a person familiar with the deal told The Associated Press.
The person spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because the move had not been announced by the team.
The Cubs also claimed right-hander Aaron Civale off waivers from the White Sox before their series finale at Colorado. Right-hander Porter Hodge was recalled from Triple-A Iowa, and left-hander Jordan Wicks was sent down. Tom Cosgrove, another lefty, was designated for assignment.
The timing of the moves makes Santana and Civale eligible for Chicago’s postseason roster because they were part of the organization before the MLB deadline at 11:59 p.m. ET on Sunday. Active major league rosters expand from 26 to 28 players on Monday, so they likely will join the team before the opener of a three-game series against Atlanta.
The 39-year-old Santana was released by Cleveland on Thursday, ending his third stint with the franchise.
Chicago has Michael Busch at first base, and Seiya Suzuki is the team’s primary designated hitter. But the addition of Santana puts another experienced option on manager Craig Counsell’s bench.
Santana batted .225 with 11 homers and 52 RBIs in 116 games with the Guardians after signing a $12 million, one-year contract in December. The former Silver Slugger and Gold Glove winner is the majors’ active leader with 1,330 career walks.
Going into Sunday’s action, Chicago was on top of the NL wild-card standings with a 78-58 record. It trailed NL Central-leading Milwaukee by 6 1/2 games.
Santana played for Counsell at the end of the 2023 season after he was traded from Pittsburgh to Milwaukee. Cubs general manager Carter Hawkins also knows Santana from his time in Cleveland’s front office.
The New York Post first reported that Santana had signed with Chicago.
Civale is 3-9 with a 5.26 ERA in 18 starts this year. He was traded from the Brewers to the White Sox for first baseman Andrew Vaughn on June 13.
Hodge is 2-1 with a 6.85 ERA and two saves in 26 appearances for Chicago this year. In his past nine appearances with Iowa going back to Aug. 1, he struck out 20 and allowed six hits over 12 scoreless innings.
“I think one thing we want to keep in mind is Porter had a big impact on this team last year and was pitching at a really high level at the end of the year last year," Counsell said. "He has not done so so far this year, but there are some signs that he’s starting to pitch well in Iowa.
"If we could get that version of Porter kind of coming back again, that’s obviously a big plus and something we’d want to still be open to. We’ll see what happens here.”
The 25-year-old Wicks, a first-round pick in the 2021 amateur draft, is 0-1 with an 8.71 ERA in six relief appearances with the Cubs this year.
AP freelance writer Craig Meyer in Denver contributed to this report.
AP MLB: https://apnews.com/MLB
Chicago White Sox starting pitcher Aaron Civale throws against the Kansas City Royals during the first inning of a baseball game in Chicago, Wednesday, Aug. 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Investigations into the Brown University mass shooting and the slaying of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor shifted Thursday when authorities discovered evidence they say indicates they were committed by the same man, who was then found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The attacker at Brown killed two students and wounded nine others in an engineering building on Saturday. Some 50 miles (80 kilometers) away MIT professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro was killed Monday night in his home in the Boston suburb of Brookline.
The FBI had earlier said it knew of no links between the cases.
Here are some answers to questions about the attacks and investigations:
Claudio Neves Valente, 48, a former Brown student and Portuguese national, was found dead in a New Hampshire storage facility after a six-day search that spanned several New England states.
Brown University President Christina Paxson said Neves Valente was enrolled at Brown from the fall of 2000 to the spring of 2001. He was admitted to the graduate school to study physics beginning in September 2000.
“He has no current affiliation with the university,” she said.
Neves Valente had studied at Brown on a student visa. He eventually obtained legal permanent residence status in September 2017. His last known residence was in Miami.
There are still “a lot of unknowns” in regard to motive, Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said. “We don’t know why now, why Brown, why these students and why this classroom,” he said.
Loureiro, 47, who was married, joined MIT in 2016 and was named last year to lead the school’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, where he worked to advance clean energy technology and other research. The center, one of MIT’s largest labs, had more than 250 people working across seven buildings when he took the helm. He was a professor of physics and nuclear science and engineering.
Valente and Loureiro attended the same academic program at a university in Portugal between 1995 and 2000, Foley said. Loureiro graduated from the physics program at Instituto Superior Técnico, Portugal’s premier engineering school, in 2000, according to his MIT faculty page.
The same year, Neves Valente was let go from a position at the Lisbon university, according to an archive of a termination notice from the school’s then-president in February 2000.
Authorities released several security videos of a person thought might have carried out the Brown attack. They showed the individual standing, walking and even running along the streets, but their face is masked or turned away in all of them.
Police say a witness then gave investigators a key tip: he saw someone who looked like the person of interest with a Nissan sedan displaying Florida plates. That enabled Providence police officers to tap into a network of more than 70 street cameras operated around the city by surveillance company Flock Safety. Those cameras track license plates and other vehicle details.
After leaving Rhode Island for Massachusetts, Providence officials said the suspect stuck a Maine license plate over the rental car’s plate to help conceal his identity.
Video footage showed Neves Valente entering an apartment building near Loureiro’s. About an hour later, he was seen entering the New Hampshire storage facility where he was later found dead, Foley said.
The two students who were killed and the nine others wounded were studying for a final in a first-floor classroom in an older section of the engineering building when the shooter walked in and opened fire.
Those killed were 19-year-old sophomore Ella Cook and 18-year-old freshman MukhammadAziz Umurzokov. Cook, whose funeral is Monday, was active in her Alabama church and served as vice president of the Brown College Republicans. Umurzokov’s family immigrated to the U.S. from Uzbekistan when he was a child, and he aspired to be a doctor.
As for the wounded, six were in stable condition Thursday, officials said. The other three were discharged.
Neves Valiente gained permanent residency status through a green card lottery program, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a post on X.
She said President Donald Trump ordered her to pause the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services program.
The diversity visa program makes up to 50,000 green cards available each year by lottery to people from countries that are little represented in the United States, many of them in Africa.
The lottery was created by Congress, and the move is almost certain to invite legal challenges.
Whittle reported from Portland, Maine. Contributing were Associated Press reporters Kimberlee Kruesi, Amanda Swinhart, Robert F. Bukaty, Matt O’Brien and Jennifer McDermott in Providence; Michael Casey in Boston; Heather Hollingsworth in Mission, Kansas; Kathy McCormack and Holly Ramer in Concord, New Hampshire; Christopher Weber in Los Angeles; and Alanna Durkin Richer, Mike Balsamo and Eric Tucker in Washington.
This combo image made with photos provided by the FBI and the Providence, Rhode Island, Police Department shows a person of interest in the shooting that occurred at Brown University in Providence, R.I., Saturday, Dec. 13, 2025. (FBI/Providence Police Department via AP)
A memorial of flowers and signs lay outside the Barus and Holley engineering building at Brown University, on Hope Street in Providence, R.I., on Tuesday, Dec 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Matt OBrien)
A Brown University student leaves campus, Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025, after all classes, exams and papers were canceled for the rest of the Fall 2025 semester following the school shooting, in Providence, R.I. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
