Eleven-year vet and solid starting pitcher Mason Wicks signs a deal a little over the league minimum to be with a huge-market team, Southampton, for his age-33 season. He enters the top half of their rotation.
The season rolls around and Southampton immediately loses their first twelve games. Wicks has one terrible start, followed by three muddy ones--but generally the team's problem is their offense, not pitching, even as Wicks goes 0-4. In his fifth start, against defending league champs Newcastle, Wicks pitches an eight-hit shutout, gets lauded, takes the spiraling team to 5-16 even as the offense only coughs up one run.....and is cut five days later.
Naturally, he's picked up just two days afterward by another team (to play in relief), and of course, stranger and stupider moves have been pulled by GMs in the history of sports. But what's a good rationale for this choice, if he just appeared to be picking up steam?
Keep in mind that, while Wicks isn't a social guy, he's not a cancer to teams or anything. And Southampton's chemistry isn't all that bad for a team with as rough a start.
This isn't even a complaint necessarily--just, what would be a good reason for him to get released by the AI like this? I'm struggling to imagine anything that wouldn't get their GM canned immediately.
(also, obviously this is 1949 and complete-game shutouts aren't in the least a rarity, but they're still nothing to sneeze at!)
(images: Wicks' homepage, game log, relevant/strange history)