The Seattle Mariners have made their first acquisition of the 2025-26 offseason, acquiring RHP Cole Wilcox from the Tampa Bay Rays. The 26 year old Wilcox had been designated for assignment on Monday,
so Seattle effectively jumped the waiver line to add the former Georgia Bulldog. He’s been added to the 40-man roster.
Partnered in a rotation with M’s righty Emerson Hancock, Wilcox was the 80th overall pick in the 2020 draft, the 8th selection of the 3rd round by the San Diego Padres, with a hefty $3.3 million signing bonus to lure him away from campus as a sophomore-eligible draftee. The 6’5 righty had tantalizing stuff, earning a profile pre-draft in 2019 from our fearless leader, Kate Preusser. At the time, Wilcox’s stuff was immense, working into the upper 90s on his heater and sitting mid-90s much like Hancock, with a potent changeup and a developing slider (again, Hancocky). There were already bullpen questions at the time, and indeed he was used as such on campus and, as of 2025, as a pro, but his size and stuff are reminiscent of both Hancock and fellow SEC-starter-turned-reliever Jackson Kowar.
Wilcox comes to Seattle from the Rays because, before throwing a pitch for the Friars, he was dealt to Tampa as part of the then-titanic package that yielded LHP ace Blake Snell. While Snell went on to start 83 games over the next three years in San Diego, with a 3.15/3.36 ERA/FIP and 10.1/9.8 bWAR/fWAR, Wilcox just debuted this year, throwing a single frame and yielding three runs. The other members of that deal are similarly out of Tampa Bay’s plans, with C Blake Hunt in Triple-A Tacoma all year with Seattle as well, RHP Luis Patiño a minor league free agent, and C Francisco Mejia not having played in the bigs since 2023. Don’t clutch your prospects, friends.
Despite those less-lofty trajectories, Wilcox offers some promise to the 2026 M’s bullpen. The big righty had Tommy John surgery, shortening his 2021 and costing him all of the 2022 campaign. When he returned to the mound, his top-flight stuff did not. Grinding his way through the minors nonetheless, Wilcox reached Triple-A Durham as a starter in 2024 with a sinker-slider heavy repertoire that induced lots of grounders despite minimal swing-and-miss. His delivery was, at the time, jarring.
This clip above from 2024 showcases Wilcox’s short-arm, jerky delivery, which helps him uncork a couple planes of movement from his mid-80s breaking balls that can sweep or drop straight down as desired. Wilcox used that slider with great frequency, but still retains a fairly potent, fading changeup. In his big league debut, however, Wilcox demonstrated the slightly longer arm action and extension he’s seemingly cultivated as a reliever in 2025.
With that has come some better juice, as he’s sitting more comfortably 95-97 again, hitting 98-99 on occasion with that sinker in the clip. It’s still not bat-missing stuff, but it helped him run a strikeout rate of 25.1% in the minors this year, with a palatable-if-elevated walk rate that can be gotten away with by good groundball pitchers more easily. Wilcox did not demonstrate great command, nor repeatability of his motion in 2025, nor has it been a forte of his since returning from injury. That’s a significant feature of what’s left the righty vulnerable to the big fly despite his decent repertoire, as he’ll hang too many pitches to be effective. The M’s will want to see his 3.70/4.97 ERA/FIP improve this year, and may work to simplify his motion in pursuit of that goal. Consider this the first piece added to the M’s roster for the 2026 campaign.
