Tom Watts was rarely shocked by anything that happened in baseball. It was a funny game.
When he heard that Brayden Wiley was traded by the Braves, however, he was absolutely shell shocked. He simply couldn't believe it. When the deal was announced on a local station in Pearl, his jaw dropped to the ground. He immediately called Rocket Wheeler, who was understandably upset.
"It's true and I don't want to talk about it," said Wheeler.
That was that.
How could the Braves, an organization that typically made shrewd moves, trade one of the best left-handed pitching prospects in the game? For crying out loud, Wiley was a 19-year-old kid who was cruising through Double-A. No one in the league could hit the kid.
It was times like these that made Watts want to quit. He had invested so much time and energy into Wiley and it was all worth it, but he simply couldn't understand how an organization could be so reckless and short sighted.
Andrew Friedman was the man of the hour. Eric Williamson of Baseball America had recently told Watts that Wiley was one of the top 50 prospects in all of baseball. What made that amazing was that Wiley was 19 and had less than three months of professional ball under his belt.
He'd decided that he'd fly out to Anaheim to wish Wiley well. He would still follow the kid's career. Perhaps Wiley would be better off in Tampa Bay. Bobby Cox was retiring at the end of the year, and the Rays knew how to develop their talent.
What a rotation that would be in the future for the Rays.
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