The trade deadline is a date that looms large for any professional baseball player, whether you’re at the big league level or working your way through the minor leagues.
Very few are truly safe from any kind of movement.
Those feeling the least secure would include anyone in the Padres organization and rising arms in the system of a winning ballclub.
Juaron Watts-Brown, a starting pitcher in the Blue Jays’ Double-A affiliate, found himself in the latter category as the calendar inched towards August.
“We all thought it was a possibility,” Watts-Brown told me ahead of Double-A Chesapeake’s matchup with Richmond yesterday. “Me and a couple of other guys, a couple of other guys that got traded, there was talk of like, ‘the Blue Jays are doing well, they’re probably going to go get a few pieces and we could be part of those package trades.’
Obviously you can speculate, but until it happens, you’re with the team you are. When it happened, it was a little surreal. It was like ‘damn, it actually happened. We talked about it, and it happened.’”
His circumstances were certainly unique, too.
“It was even more weird just because I showed up to play these guys too,” he said.
As fate would have it, when the Orioles sent Seranthony Domínguez to the Blue Jays in exchange for Watts-Brown, the O’s were playing the Jays. Domínguez just needed to change locker rooms.
It was the same story for Watts-Brown, who slots in as the No. 13 prospect in Baltimore’s system, according to MLB Pipeline. The young arm that just walked from one end of the field to the other.
“The two other guys that got traded, they’ve gotta pack their stuff up and go somewhere else,” he said. “No, I didn’t go nowhere, I just walked across and that was it. It was cool, glad I didn’t have to go far. It was an easy transition too.”
Amidst a whirlwind of change, the Orioles’ coaching staff didn’t want to put too much on the 23-year-old right-hander. Watts-Brown had other ideas.
“They kind of had a plan, but it was as far as, ‘it was kind of a crazy week, so just go out there and pitch.’ They kind of mentioned a couple things and I told them ‘I want to get on it quick ‘cause there’s not much time left already as it is, and obviously, I’m trying to get to the major league level as quickly as possible, so if we can start hammering those things that we’re trying to work on, it’ll just make that process easier.’
Understandably, he was eager to continue the success he has found in 2025.
After a 2024 season in which Watts-Brown walked over five batters per nine innings with a 4.72 ERA in 21 games in Low-A and High-A, the right-hander has improved his ERA, WHIP, hits per nine, walks per nine and strikeouts per nine in 2025.
While he offers a plus four-seam fastball and has started to throw a two-seamer with the O’s, Watts-Brown’s bread and butter has always been his slider.
Just don’t ask him why.
“Honestly, I’m not too sure,” he said with a laugh when asked why the pitch had been so effective. “I get a consistent shape on it, I get it to a consistent location every day I go out there, and that’s why it works. It plays off my fastball, I have a pretty good fastball. So being able to play off that allows it to play like it should.”
Though his 6.91 ERA in three games with Chesapeake isn’t anything to write home about, don’t expect that number to stay that high with an impressive 1.116 WHIP, 2.5 walks per nine and 12.6 strikeouts per nine.
Like many young pitchers, he knows the key to his next steps.
“Just my command,” Watts-Brown said. “Being better in the zone, cutting the walks. Last year I struggled when I went up to High-A because I was walking guys. Haven’t really gotten hit around too much in my minor league career, it’s been the walks that cause the damage for me. So I think that this year, minimizing that, being in the zone with all my pitches has allowed me to be more successful.
Trusting it in the zone and getting whiff in the zone is what big league guys do. So, in order to get there, you’ve got to be in the zone, you’ve got to not walk guys. So trusting in the zone, trusting my pitches is really what has made this year be better.”
With just 14 games at the Double-A level under his belt, it will, more than likely, still be a while before we see Watts-Brown at the big league level. But he joins a growing and impressive group of arms clustered together in many farm system rankings, including some of his Double-A teammates in Michael Forret, Nestor German and Braxton Bragg.
Watts-Brown didn’t let the franticness of the trade deadline keep him from improving. In just a few short weeks, he’s added a pitch and posted impressive peripheral numbers.
Who knows where the young arm will end up after some more time in his new organization.