Rays To Acquire Tyler Wells

The Rays are acquiring right-hander Tyler Wells from the Orioles, reports Jeff Passan of ESPN. Prospect Michael Forret is going back to the O’s, per Joel Sherman of The New York Post. It’s unclear if that’s the whole deal or if more players are involved. Wells, 31, was a decent back-end starter earlier in his career. He missed most of the 2024 and 2025 seasons due to surgery on the ulnar collateral ligament in his elbow. He is having a healthy season here in 2026 but the O’s have moved him to the bullpen. He is doing well in the new role. He has logged 54 innings out of the Baltimore bullpen this year with a 2.67 earned run average. He has gotten a bit of help from a .241 batting average on balls in play and 76.8% strand rate but his 25.1% strikeout rate and 6.2% walk rate are both good figures. His 3.41 FIP and 3.47 SIERA are a bit pessimistic about his ERA but still point to him generally doing good work. Wells is in his third of four arbitration seasons as a Super Two guy. Due to his surgery and the time he missed, he is making a fairly modest $2.445MM salary this year. There’s about $720K of that still to be paid out. He can be retained through 2027 and would be due a nice raise after this year’s success. The Orioles came into the deadline as a borderline buy/sell team and president of Mike Elias said that the club would straddle both sides of that line. However, all of their moves so far have been of the seller variety, at least for players with a short window of control. Impending free agent Taylor Ward was sent to the Mariners. Dean Kremer and Adley Rutschman, both free agents after 2027, were sent to the Twins and Red Sox, respectively. Now Wells, also controlled through 2027, is heading to Tampa. More to come. View Comments (28)