A brief burst of success, then struggles and injury
With the 2024 regular season over, it is time for us to go back and take a look at the players who appeared for the Texas Rangers this season.
Today, we look at pitcher Cole Winn.
Cole Winn made his major league debut in 2024, so there’s that.
After a bad 2022 season at AAA, followed by a bad season at 2023 in AAA, it was beginning to look as if Cole Winn would never make it.
And Cole Winn actually pitched well when he got his first shot at the majors. Winn had been moved into a bullpen role in the minors in the second half of 2023, and had made four appearances in relief for the Express prior to his being called up, three of them good, one of them bad.
It seemed likely that Winn would be only up briefly when he was summoned in mid-April, but he did well in his first appearance, retiring all batters he faced, and so got to stick around. The success continued through the end of April, with Winn making five appearances covering seven innings, striking out seven and walking just one.
Cole Winn out of the bullpen, it appeared, might be a good.
That success was not sustained, of course. He got lit up his next time out, his first appearance in May, allowing four runs in one-third of an inning. He ended up giving up runs in five of his six major league May appearances, allowing 11 runs, before being sent back to Round Rock.
Success in his return to AAA combined with ongoing problems in the major league pen brought Winn back for a second go-round with the big club in June. He allowed two runs in each of his two subsequent outings, was sent down, had his demotion rescinded due to his having a shoulder ailment, and spent the rest of the season on the injured list.
Its been almost seven years since Cole Winn was selected as the Rangers’ first round pick in 2018. We had hoped that by now he would be a fixture in the Rangers’ rotation. Instead, he’s clinging to his 40 man roster spot by his fingertips, with the question being whether he’s going to be able to contribute as an up-and-down guy who may someday be a functional middle reliever.
We have talked about the underwhelming 2018 draft, and at this point, Cole Winn is the one guy the Rangers might hope to get some value from. Jonathan Ornelas, third rounder in 2018, is still in the organization, but he appears to have a utility guy ceiling. Though one can argue whether a decent utility man has more or less value than a decent middle reliever.
Winn is still here, for the time being at least. We might see him in the majors again for the Rangers. Things may click, and he may end up being a fixture in the pen for the next several years, someone who, when he’s summoned into the game, we think, “Oh, good, its Cole Winn, we’ll get out of this jam now.”
One can always hope.
Previously: