The Rockaway Wave
Originally Published August 29, 2025
February is an important month on the United States baseball calendar. For Major and Minor League Baseball ballplayers, it marks the beginning of spring training. For college ballplayers, it marks the beginning of the regular season.
For Trace Willhoite, when February rolled around, he wasn’t either. Instead, he was a coach, working as a graduate assistant at Lipscomb University, where he just spent the past three seasons and set the program’s all-time home run record along the way. He was also pursuing his master’s degree, and on the weekends, working as a bellman at a hotel in downtown Nashville.
All while staying ready in case an opportunity to continue playing came his way.
“It was just all day, every day,” Jeff Forehand, head coach of Lipscomb baseball, said. “He woke up, and he just knew he could play professionally, and he just stuck with it to make ends meet. Somebody knew somebody who helped him get into working at the hotel, and he made some pretty good money over there at the hotel to pay the bills. We were covering his school to help us. And he would still get up first thing in the morning, and he was training in the morning, and he would train after practice, and get his master’s degree work in.”
Willhoite didn’t start his college career at Lipscomb. Originally, he was a Louisville commit, but transferred to Northwest Florida State College, a JUCO, before playing a game for the Cardinals. He made an immediate impact, first in the COVID-19-shortened 2020 season and then again in 2021 when he was a First Team All-Conference player.
Then it was onto Lipscomb for his Junior season.
“Found somewhere that I loved, that was a really good fit for me, not only on the baseball side, but just like, becoming a man,” Willhoite said. “Had three years there and love it.”
Willhoite stepped into an immediate everyday role for the Bisons, leading the team in home runs while finishing third in both OPS and RBIs in his first season. In his second season, he was a major part of what ended up being an ASUN Championship-winning Lipscomb squad. It was also the same year he set the program’s all-time home run record. He did it in an away game at Louisville, which he said was a surreal moment.
“All of us coaches … none of us can really take the credit for him,” Forehand said. “He just was a really gifted player that had a little chip on his shoulder after leaving a Power Four and going to junior college. I think he really had something to prove.”
He didn’t have an opportunity to go pro after that season, so with an extra year of eligibility due to COVID-19, he returned to Lipscomb for a third and final season. Once again, he crushed the baseball. After hitting 17 home runs in each of his first two seasons, he hit 19 to finish out his collegiate career.
Still, no opportunity with a Major League organization came.
In mid-July, Willhoite made his MLB Draft League debut. Contrary to what the name suggests, this was not a chance for him to be drafted. In fact, his debut came two days after the conclusion of the 2024 MLB Draft, where he was indeed not selected.
The MLB Draft League is split into two halves. The first half is for amateur, draft-eligible players, both from high school and college. For those players, it’s an opportunity to raise their stock for the upcoming MLB Draft.
After the draft takes place, the league shifts for the second half. Players depart for MLB organizations, and the rosters are then comprised of professional players who no longer have amateur eligibility.
Willhoite played in the second half. It’s still an opportunity to show Major League organizations what you can do, but historically, players are signed from the second half much less frequently than they are signed from the first.
He set the pace, leading the MLB Draft League in home runs in 2024 with 10, two more than anyone else. His .986 OPS ranked fourth, and he finished top 10 in both doubles and RBIs.
Despite this, he remained unsigned.
“The guy showed for the three years he was with us that he was a versatile player,” Forehand said. “He could play any spot on the infield. Probably in pro ball is not a middle guy, but he did that at the highest level in college. He hit all the home runs, broke the record. Our team went to a regional in ‘23 that he was the leader on. I just think that it was shocking to me.”
So he returned to Lipscomb as part of the coaching staff, working towards his master’s degree, working at the hotel, and staying ready for an opportunity.
“The guys were getting ready to throw bullpens, I’m standing in,” Willhoite said. “When they’re taking BP on the field, I’m out there in the infield trying to take as many live reps as possible.”
He even had an opportunity in late February to play with the Irish Wolfhounds Baseball Club as a guest player in an exhibition series vs. Team Germany. Willhoite said the Wolfhounds are aiming to help Ireland reach the World Baseball Classic and, in turn, help fund youth baseball in Ireland.
“It was a cool opportunity to go experience Arizona and the WBC and play against those guys, but also just an opportunity to get a lot of at-bats, just to stay ready, just in case,” Willhoite said.
He said he asked himself during those six months between the end of the MLB Draft League and when he was signed if he would continue playing. His faith, and the Lord, he said, kept him going.
Finally, a week into March, Willhoite’s opportunity came. Lipscomb was down in Tallahassee, Florida, about to play Florida State in a series, and he got the call. The Mets were going to bring him to spring training. He packed up his stuff, flew back to Nashville to pack for Spring Training, and then flew down to Port St. Lucie to become a New York Met.
“Just chills,” Forehand said about what he remembered from when Willhoite told him the news. “It happened for you, man. It just doesn’t happen for so many, and especially after the fact, was this ever going to happen to get into affiliated baseball? I remember as soon as he saw me when he got to Florida, and I got to Florida, as soon as he saw me, he was like, ‘Jeff, I gotta go.’ And I was like, ‘What’s wrong?’ And he said, ‘The Mets called.’ And I mean, it was almost like chills came over me.”
Forehand said Andy Green, the Mets’ senior vice president of player development, had conversations with both him and former New York Met Lucas Duda, who is Lipscomb’s hitting coach.
“I think Lucas helped maybe get his name out there a little bit,” Forehand said.
A seventh-round pick of the Mets in 2007, Duda spent a decade with the Mets organization before he was traded to the Tampa Bay Rays at the 2017 trade deadline. He played with Green in 2010 for the Triple-A Buffalo Bisons, when Green was still a player in the Mets’ minor league system.
Duda joined the Lipscomb coaching staff ahead of the 2025 season, so he never coached Willhoite, but was on the staff when he returned as a graduate assistant.
“It’s pretty incredible, that’s a pretty big workload he had, and you could never tell,” Duda said. “He always came to the field with great energy. The guys just kind of gravitated towards him.”
Both Forehand and Duda emphasized that Willhoite’s play is what earned him the opportunity with the Mets.
“He’s the one that did it, I didn’t have anything to do with it,” Duda said. “I’m just a washed-up dude who hit him some ground balls and flipped him some baseballs. There’s no credit coming my way. His work ethic — everything is about him. My role was very small.”
Willhoite officially signed with the Mets on March 8, 19 days after position players reported to Mets spring training. By his second day, he was taking live at-bats in practice.
“It was kind of surreal, just because you get baseball every day, which is ideal,” Willhoite said. “It was like a, hey, kind of thrown into it, and I felt good about it performance-wise.”
A little over two weeks after he signed, he appeared in a Major League spring training game vs. the New York Yankees. Willhoite took at-bats vs. Fernando Cruz and Luke Weaver — two established MLB relief pitchers — in the same month that started with him as a graduate assistant for a college baseball program.
The Mets assigned him to Single-A St. Lucie to begin the season, and he hit the ground running.
“Usually, the last guy in is the first guy out if he doesn’t put up some numbers,” Forehand said. “Fortunately, Trace came in and did that right away, which I think solidified what the people within the Mets organization that signed him felt like it was gonna happen.”
Willhoite doubled off the bench in his first minor league game, and then did so again in his first minor league start the next day. He hit his first two home runs about a week and a half later, and finished his first month in affiliated baseball with an .815 OPS. He took off in May, hitting .275 with a .995 OPS, slumped a bit in June, and then rebounded with another .900-plus OPS performance in July.
On August 11, Willhoite was promoted to High-A Brooklyn to join the Cyclones after hitting .265/.382/.470/.852 with a team-leading 14 home runs through 85 games.
“The guy’s a grinder, man, you can tell,” Cyclones manager Gilbert Gómez said. “He wants to get better. He puts the work in to get better. It seems that he’s just that kind of guy that won’t stop working until he continues to get better.”
Gómez noted how he has a simple, clean swing that doesn’t have a lot of moving parts, which is exactly what Willhoite said he has worked on this year. He’s made some swing adjustments, “trimming the fat” and cutting down on the movements in an effort to be more direct to the ball and increase his contact rate.
It’s worked too, cutting his strikeout rate from 36.5% in April to 21.3% from May on. While it has climbed back up a bit since he was promoted to Brooklyn, it’s still very much a small sample size. And, aside from the strikeouts, everything else he’s done for Brooklyn has been stellar.
Through 12 games for the Cyclones, Willhoite is hitting .278/.378/.528/.908 with two home runs and three doubles. Among South Atlantic League players with at least 10 games played in August, his OPS ranks seventh. Among Cyclones, it’s a clear best.
“[The draft] is only 20 rounds, now. Before, you got more opportunities,” Gómez said. “So now, you really have to hone in on the talent that you’re looking for. But I feel like even so, the fact that we were able to identify him after that and pick him up late in spring training and give him a shot, I mean, it speaks volumes to our scouting department and our ability to sign guys like that.”
After primarily being a third baseman and even spending time at second and third, Willhoite has exclusively been a first baseman since joining the Mets organization. He’s still taking grounders at third, and Gómez said he’s confident he will eventually be able to play both corner infield spots and maybe even some outfield, but for now, he’s only played first — Duda’s position.
“I just told him, there’s probably one important thing over there: always catch it,” Duda said. “Try to catch it. I wasn’t the best first baseman, but I just kind of gave him some tips that helped me around the bag. But most of the stuff he’s already got.”
Duda said he generally tries to stay out of the way, but the two still text every now and again. As for Forehand, the two are still in regular contact.
“My wife’s family’s in plumbing, and he needed a plumber to go to his house in Nashville to work on something,” Forehand said. “So, he sent me the stats of what he did in the first week in High-A, and also to see if my wife could route a plumber to his house.”
At 24 years old, Willhoite was on the older side for players in Single-A and still is for those in High-A. For Gómez, his steady presence will be important for him as his lineup of mostly 20-to 22-year-olds heads to the South Atlantic League playoffs in September. He can help guide the younger players, and it’s something he has already started to do.
“Truly living the dream,” Willhoite said. “That’s kind of what I’ve been trying to teach some of the younger guys. This is an opportunity every day to compete and work hard, and we’re actually living the dream. If you think back to when we were five or six years old, what did you want to do when you grew up? Be a baseball player. Everybody wants to be a baseball player, and we get to actually do it. It’s crazy how they were blessed with this, to be able to live the dream.”
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