Rays name Marx assistant GM among 4 baseball ops promotions

TAMPA -- The Rays on Thursday announced four promotions within their baseball operations department, including the promotion of Hamilton Marx to vice president and assistant general manager.

The Rays also elevated Samantha Bireley to director of baseball operations, Jeremy Sowers to director of Major League operations and Danielle Dockx to director of position player programming, continuing their longstanding tradition of promoting from within their own front office.

“We’re committed to constantly evolving as an organization,” Rays president of baseball operations Erik Neander said in a statement. “These promotions strengthen our ability to handle the daily challenges of our industry while also giving us space to focus on what is truly important to us -- supporting our players and staff, fostering trust, and pushing forward with new ideas.”

The Rays promoted Marx, heading into his 12th season with the organization, from the role of VP of baseball process and strategy. He effectively takes over the position left vacant by the recent departure of longtime club executive Carlos Rodriguez.

“Excited. Energized. Couldn't be happier,” Marx, 39, said in a phone interview on Friday. “This is the only club I've worked for. I'm obviously a little biased, but I can't imagine working for a better organization. Erik’s leadership, I can't imagine having a better leader than him and just the group that we have and just being able to continue helping us try to get better.”

With Marx in his new position, the Rays have four assistant GMs -- Will Cousins, Kevin Ibach, Chanda Lawdermilk and Marx -- under Neander. They have not given anyone the title of general manager since Peter Bendix left the organization to become the Marlins’ president of baseball operations in November 2023.

In his new role, Marx will oversee all amateur scouting -- domestic and international, with the latter being the biggest change for him -- while continuing his work with baseball process and strategy and leading all the Rays’ work on contracts and salary arbitration. He has a wide array of responsibilities, according to the club, including all areas of player acquisition and roster planning, research and development, scouting and player development.

“There's obviously a ton of people involved in everything we do, but kind of being the point person to basically just connect all of our player acquisition spaces,” Marx said. “Make sure just anything we learn on the domestic side that can apply to the international side, vice versa, and just continuing to kind of synergize everything and make sure we're doing the best we can of learning from each other, and kind of connecting all these different departments.”

After spending four years as a CPA with PricewaterhouseCoopers, earning his MBA from Duke and spending a summer interning for the MLB Labor Relations department, Marx initially joined the Rays as a baseball operations intern in 2015. He went on to serve as a baseball operations assistant (2016-17), an amateur scouting analyst (2018), an assistant director of amateur scouting (2019-20) and director of baseball operations (2021-24).

Bireley will work closely with Neander and the assistant GMs on Major League roster logistics, contracts and oversight while also serving as a liaison between the Rays and Major League Baseball for rules and regulatory compliance. She has spent 12 years in Tampa Bay’s front office, rising from amateur scouting administrator (2014-18) to manager of baseball administration (2019-21) to manager of baseball operations (2022) and assistant director of baseball operations (2023-25).

Sowers will continue supporting the management of the Major League roster, and he will now oversee the club’s advance scouting and Major League video efforts. He previously worked as an assistant (2017-18), coordinator (2019), manager (2020-22) and assistant director (2023-25) of Major League operations.

Dockx (pronounced “dox”) will oversee the creation and execution of individualized development plans for the Rays’ Minor League position players, according to the team. She joined the organization as a baseball operations fellow in 2018 then served as a baseball development assistant (2019-21) and coordinator (2022-23) before working as the assistant director of player programs and integration (2024-25).