A former Philadelphia Phillies draft selection is giving the Major Leagues another try after signing a contract with another NL team on Monday. According to The Athletic, the Chicago Cubs signed right-handed pitcher Sam McWilliams to a minor league contract. He may not be a well-known name among Phillies fans. However, in 2014, he was the team’s eighth-round choice out of Beech High School in Hendersonville, Tennessee.
Since then, McWilliams has played for six different teams, been traded twice, picked in the Rule 5 Draft, designated for assignment once, and left baseball in late 2022 to work as a sales representative for Blast Athletics. According to The Athletic, that work put him back on the radar of Major League teams, and the Cubs will be the ones to take a risk on him. After being picked by the Phillies, he was soon sent to their rookie team in the Gulf Coast League, where he went 2-3 with a 5.40 ERA in nine games (five starts). In 25 innings, he struck out 10 and walked 6.
In 2015, he stayed with the Phillies in the GCL, starting seven games and going 0-2 while lowering his ERA to 3.27. He showed some potential, striking out 21 and walking five over 33 innings. Perhaps there was just enough promise to be exchanged. That November, the Phillies traded him to Arizona for pitcher Jeremy Hellickson, who went on to be their Opening Day starter in 2016.
That also sparked McWilliams’ itinerant career. Arizona traded him as a player to be named later in a 2018 deal with Tampa Bay. The Rays lost him to Kansas City in the Rule 5 Draft later that year. The Royals returned him to Tampa Bay after a horrible Spring Training, but McWilliams got to Triple-A Durham.
But, after he couldn’t break through to the Majors, he went into free agency in 2020, signed a Major League deal with the New York Mets but was designated for assignment in June by the Mets while he was at Triple-A Syracuse. That led to finishing 2021 with the San Diego Padres’ Triple-A affiliate in El Paso and starting the 2022 season with the Cincinnati Reds, where he pitched in Double-A before he left baseball.
