The Rays have selected the contract of righty Cole Wilcox from Triple-A Durham, per a team announcement. He’ll join the bullpen and make his major league debut the first time he gets into a game. Infielder Taylor Walls was transferred from the 10-day IL to the 60-day IL to open a spot on the 40-man roster, while right-hander Joey Gerber was optioned to Durham to clear space on the active roster.
Wilcox, 26, was a third-round pick by the Padres in 2020, though that undersells his stock at the time of the draft. Wilcox “slid” into the third round due primarily to signability concerns. A draft-eligible sophomore at the University of Georgia, Wilcox was widely regarded as a first-round talent. San Diego plucked him with the No. 80 overall pick and swayed him with a $3.3MM signing bonus that was a record for a third-round pick at the time. Just five months later, he was traded to the Rays alongside Francisco Mejia, Luis Patiño and Blake Hunt in the Blake Snell blockbuster.
Things haven’t panned out for Wilcox in the years since. He was dominant for the Rays’ Class-A club in 2021 but made just 10 starts before incurring an elbow injury that eventually led to Tommy John surgery. He returned late in the 2022 season but totaled just 16 innings between the Rays’ Class-A and Rookie-level affiliates.
Wilcox spent the 2023 season pitching out of the rotation with Tampa Bay’s Double-A affiliate but struggled to a 5.23 ERA while showing far worse command than he had prior to surgery. He repeated the Double-A level in 2024 and found better success in terms of his bottom-line run prevention numbers; Wilcox dropped his ERA all the way to 3.18, but he did so with a below-average 18.9% strikeout rate. That still prompted a promotion to Triple-A, but Wilcox again struggled with shaky command and diminished stuff. His fastball, which had previously sat 94-97 mph and scraped triple digits, instead sat at 92.5 mph that season.
Tampa Bay moved Wilcox to the bullpen in 2025, and the results are more encouraging. He’s pitched to a 3.70 ERA in 58 1/3 innings. His 10.8% walk rate is still too high, but he’s averaging 95.8 mph on his sinker now that he’s moved into a short relief role. He’s also scrapped his changeup and now relies on a pure two-pitch mix featuring that sinker and a sharp slider that always graded as his best pitch in scouting reports. Wilcox has kept 50.3% of his opponents’ batted balls on the ground, and his 12.3% swinging-strike rate is better than average as well.
At the time of the Snell trade, the Rays had surely hoped that Wilcox would develop into a key member of their rotation. That no longer appears to be in the cards, but with a sinker approaching 96 mph and a quality slider that’s averaging 86.1 mph, he still has the makings of a potentially useful reliever. He’ll get his first opportunity in the majors in the final weeks of the 2025 campaign, but now that he’s on the 40-man roster, Wilcox will have a full slate of three minor league option years and ample runway to prove himself as a member of manager Kevin Cash’s relief corps in subsequent seasons.
Wrong Wilcox tagged
Both this dude and Dylan Lesko I was really pleased when Preller drafted them, he traded them to Tampa not long after and then they completely bombed after the trade.
To be fair, Lesko also bombed before the trade.
Yeah I really liked Lesko and thought he might be the steal of that draft. He’s still young though and TB can certainly mold pitchers.
Thst Blake Snell trade is a great example of why you shouldn’t overvalue prospects!
And the Juan Soto trade is a great example of why you should!
I feel like a baseball scholar could spend their entire life disecting all of Preller’s trades and the psychology behind them.
Man, that Soto trade the first half of the year was like the Brian Giles trade on steroids. Gore looked like a top 3 pitcher in baseball, Wood was making a case for having the most trade value in the game, Abrams looked like a top 5 SS, and Susana looked like possibly the pitching prospect with the best stuff in the game.
Wish the Nats the best with that haul, but admittedly I was a little relieved the momentum slowed some on each during the second half.
Preller does what a GM should do and spends his prospect capital to get pieces to win. He also isn’t afraid to make big moves like getting Soto…and then trading him to restock. He makes the trade deadline fun and just restocks the cupboard with good drafts and trades. Not a fan of all of his signings but he’s a good GM.
It’s not his job to make the trade deadline fun.
He’s not a good GM.
> BuT mUh TaTiS aNd SnElL !
Blind squirrel and all that.
You obviously disagree Harambe, and that’s fine… but realistically speaking Preller is a Top 3 GM/POBO. If he were hypothetically let go, he would be hired within a week by another team. That’s telling. I can’t imagine I’m alone in this thought, but I sure hope Preller continues to run our Pads for another decade. We’re relevant with AJ at the helm. We’ve never been consistently relevant… until now.
I fully concur, Gwynning.
“but realistically speaking Preller is a Top 3 GM/POBO.”
Absolutely not.
“If he were hypothetically let go, he would be hired within a week by another team.”
Probably as the head of an amateur scouting department but never again as a GM/POBO.
“But has produced 4 straight winning seasons, 5 out of 6 winning seasons, multiple playoff chances…”
And they undeniably would have been better in 2023 onward if they never traded for Juan Soto!
“produced more war from players he’s acquired than players he’s traded…”
False! And this also doesn’t account for salaries/club control.