Today: Wolf has cleared waivers, and the Padres have sent him outright to Triple-A El Paso, according to his transaction log on MLB.com. Given his very limited MLB service time and the fact that this is his first career outright, he has no choice but to accept the assignment and remain at Triple-A.
August 8: The Padres announced Thursday that they’ve designated left-hander Jackson Wolf for assignment. He’d been pitching for their Triple-A affiliate in El Paso, and his 40-man spot will go to veteran righty Carl Edwards Jr., whose contract has been selected. San Diego optioned righty Alek Jacob to El Paso in a corresponding move.
Wolf, 25, was in his second stint with the Padres organization. Originally their fourth-round pick in 2021, he went to the Pirates at the 2023 trade deadline as part of the return for lefty Rich Hill and first baseman Jiman Choi. The Bucs designated Wolf for assignment earlier this year, however, and wound up trading him back to the Padres in exchange for minor league infielder Kervin Pichardo.
Wolf made his big league debut with the ’23 Padres, allowing three runs over five innings in his lone start. He’s spent the season with their El Paso club but struggled to a 7.21 ERA over 83 2/3 innings. He’s made 23 appearances, 18 of them starts. Wolf has unquestionably had some tough luck, yielding a .353 average on balls in play that should be due for some regression, but his 17.5% strikeout rate and 12.6% walk rate are both considerably worse than league average as well. Wolf’s 9.8% swinging-strike rate and 24.3% opponents’ chase rate are both sub-par marks, too. In general, he hasn’t induced whiffs or limited free passes enough to compensate for the amount of extra-base damage he’s yielded: 12 homers, 16 doubles, five triples.
This past offseason, Wolf ranked 21st among Pirates prospects, per Baseball America, whose scouting report tabbed him as a potential fifth starter or bulk reliever. His rough results in 2024 haven’t done any favors for his prospect stock, but Wolf is a 25-year-old who posted solid Double-A numbers in 2023 and is still in just the second of three minor league option years. A rebuilding club looking to stock up on pitching depth (e.g. Marlins, White Sox) could have some interest in an optionable lefty of this nature. The trade deadline has passed, so the Padres’ only course of action with Wolf will be to place him on waivers.
Edwards, 33 next month, will be in his second stint with the Padres as well. He briefly pitched 1 2/3 innings for San Diego back in 2019. He’s one of many former Rangers prospects who’ve found their way onto the Padres roster since the hiring of president of baseball operations A.J. Preller — a former Rangers assistant GM.
Edwards spent the 2022-23 seasons with the Nationals and pitched well out of manager Davey Martinez’s bullpen, tallying 93 2/3 innings of 3.07 ERA ball — albeit with shaky rate stats (20% strikeout rate, 10.6% walk rate). A stress fracture in Edwards’ right shoulder ended his 2023 campaign prematurely and limited him to a minor league deal this past offseason. That deal came with the Cubs, but Edwards triggered a June opt-out in that contract after he hadn’t been added to the big league roster and signed a minor league deal with the Padres.
It’s been a decent year for the lanky right-hander down in Triple-A. Between the Cubs and Padres organizations, he sports a combined 3.30 ERA but with similar strikeout and walk issues that existed during his Nats run. He’s set down a respectable 22.2% of opponents on strikes but also issued walks at a grim 14.3% rate. Edwards has been a reliever for the bulk of his career but was working out of the rotation in El Paso. He’s ticketed for the relief corps now that he’s back in the majors, but that recent work as a starter means he’s stretched out for multiple innings if needed.
Between the rain delay during Cease start, and last night extra inning game, Padres bullpen has been overused. Even though Jacob has been doing good, some fresh arm is badly needed. Hopefully Edwards won’t be a disappointment.
Update: not even managed to out a single batter, allowed 2 inherited runners to score (one of them is due to wild pitch), and loaded the bases before being relieved. He’s a disappointment.
Time to DFA Edward’s and have Gillespie or Reynolds on the next flight to Miami – hopefully, already there!
Been a very rough series for both teams, as a Pirates fan, it’s killing them. Not getting starts from Keller and Falter and having to use Marco Gonzales who sucks as a starter, and working the bullpen hard. Fans bashing Shelton of course but I think he’s done his best. They didn’t want to use Holderman last night but had no other choice getting into extras.
Getting swept was probably rougher on the Pirates than the Pads. Some bad breaks for Pirates, they could have easily won games 2 and 3, both of which were beyond stressful to watch.
That O’Neil Cruz throwing error must be painful to watch.
Shelton isn’t the problem per se, but he’s hardly been better than OK at best. San Diego just killed our playoff chances, plain and simple. I’m so mad at Oneil, but at this point it’s just whatever.
Kash,
Looking at that one play in a vacuum, but really, would they have been in it last week without Oneil’s contributions all year?
Yeah just heated in the moment. We’ve all made costly throwing errors. It happens but it still sucks. Good luck Padres, beat LA!
Guess this was only the year of the Jackson for batters!
Jacob has pitched well and I’m sure he will be back. This was just to get a fresh arm in the pen after the last few games.
They are within striking range of the Dodgers and the time has come to sign Trevor Bauer. They won’t be able to shake off the suddenly hot Diamondbacks nor catch LA without him. It is a move that must be done.
MLB teams will sign the corpse of Walter Johnson before they sign that guy. Stop it already with the Trevor Bauer man love.
Maybe that’s the problem
Mick- is that you Harambe? You’re still beating that same drum to death…??
Outside of his issues, even prior to those he was viewed as a ‘me first’ type of player.
Haven’t heard alot of teams/players clamoring to sign him and maybe the off-field issues are just another excuse.
Trevor proves he can be a team player, he might get a shot.
Marginal SP talent cost a ton at the deadline and he remained unsigned. I don’t think there’s another game in the majors for him.
He’s definitely talented enough to help.
He’s not stretched out,hasn’t faced major league hitters in years, is he willing to pitch in the pen?
These are just MLB prerequisites.
Just from a pure baseball standpoint.
What issues he was proven innocent.
Not in the court of public opinion. He is a cancer in the clubhouse and a dirtbag. And if he wasn’t he would have already been signed.
So you played with him before?
His demographic isn’t allowed second chances and is guilty until proven innocent
Oh teddyj, you outrageous scamp!
I think this DFA is strictly out of necessity since they can’t recall Gillaspie or Reynolds because they were optioned within the last 15 days. Would have made way more sense to bring one of them back to reinforce the pen in the short term rather than have to take someone off the 40 man.
Hopefully Wolf can pass through waivers because the Padres need all the upper minors starting depth they can get. Not that I’m expecting him to make an impact, but they’re just so thin at AA and AAA right now.
Edwards is over. He has Hendricks velocity most of the time.
Alek Jacob has been lights out this past week. I would have preferred to see Kolek sent down. That is not knowing their contract situation.
Kole is on the IR and is not eligible to be optioned. And if he were his Rule 5 status would send him back to Seattle.
Why is Profar getting plunked so much?
Pirate fans have to love the fact they are about to head to SD for a few games next.Either hate it expecting to lose or excited for a chance for revenge.We’ll see which it will be.All I know is I’m happy we miss Skenes in both series.
Jackson was a popular name 20ish years ago. There’s gotta be like 4 or 5 mlb players with the first name of Jackson. There’s Jackson Merril, Jackson Holliday, Jackson Chourio, Jackson Ferris( not in The Show yet) the other 3 are with their respective teams. And now the Jackson from this article. And there’s more.
Is Edwards still on the team? Id take Wolf over Edwards.Or just leave Jakobs on the 40.
There shouldn’t be a comma before “too.” How does Adams not grasp this simple rule of punctuation? Does he get paid by the comma or something? The guy is weird.