How did purple and gold play a role in West Columbus pitcher Trey Benton not being drafted?

CERRO GORDO, NC (WWAY) — West Columbus pitcher Trey Benton was not selected in last week’s Major League Baseball Draft. It’s hard to understand why unless you know the real story and the key question to ask is how did the West Columbus standout go unselected when he projected to go early and high. Perhaps the answer has something to do with the color purple.

“I am sure not many people understand how it works.” Rick Benton is not afraid to admit that he did not know how the major league draft really works until this year. We caught up with Rick Benton and his 17 year old son Trey, who graduated from West Columbus High School last week.

“We set an number,” Trey Benton told WWAY on Tuesday. “Some clubs got close to the number, but the dollar figure that we set was we communicated to ECU and we had it set and we said if we don’t get this we’re gonna go to college.”

Some prognosticators predicted Trey Benton would go as high as the third round in last week’s MLB draft, no lower than the 7th round, but Trey never heard his name called, even though there were 38 rounds over a 3-day stretch.

“They want to know you’re going to sign,” Rick Benton said. “We had conversations at 12 o’clock on Friday, if we take you here, are you going to sign? And they won’t commit which I understand. We couldn’t at that time, we had to make a decision and we couldn’t say yes.”

Trey is a 6 foot 5 right-handed pitcher. He’s ranked the 9th best prospect in the state by Baseball America. This includes both high school and college players. “Essentially the investment for us to go pro versus the opportunity for him to go to East Carolina with the future opportunity, we just outweighed that as more of an investment for his future. Hopefully that’s the right decision, only the good lord knows,” per Rick Benton. So Trey Benton will be an East Carolina pitcher. He won’t become draft eligible again until 2019.