Minor Trade, Big Reaction

The Royals swung a deal on Saturday that got some reaction from fans and analysts.

Spring training has only just begun, but the Royals continue to wheel and deal to make over a roster that lost 106 games in 2023. The focus has largely been on the pitching staff and the trade on Saturday sent prospect David Sandlin to the Red Sox in exchange for reliever John Schreiber. I’ll get into this a little bit more, but it’s probably a deal that makes sense for both sides when you can take a look at how each team would pitch it. For the Royals, it’s that they got a reliever with a 27.9 percent strikeout rate and 9.5 percent walk rate since joining the Red Sox to help fill out the back of a revamped bullpen. For the Red Sox, they traded a reliever who missed time with a lat injury for a pitching prospect popping 100 MPH in offseason work.

They’re both right. And I’m going to start this by saying I understand why each side would even consider the trade. The Royals improved their 2024 club (and potentially 2025 and 2026 with Schreiber under control through then) while dealing from a reportedly weak farm system. I chose that wording carefully and I’ll get to it in a second. The Red Sox don’t seem to be pushing for a division in 2024 for some reason so they added an arm who could slot into their rotation as early as late 2024, but more realistically sometime next season if he’s healthy.

My reaction on X (ugh) was, “Oof I don’t like trading Sandlin for a reliever.” I’m going to amend that here shortly, but I don’t generally like a team that has a shot to contend but is certainly no guarantee to trade a prospect with a legitimate chance to start for a short-inning reliever. The amendment that I think I would make to that post is that I don’t like trading Sandlin for that reliever. Schreiber has his positive attributes and, again, I think he makes the 2024 Royals better, but I just don’t love the injury he had, the age or the lack of a track record.

He was originally a Tigers draft pick in 2016 and made it to the big leagues in 2019. He posted a great strikeout to walk ratio, but got bit a little hard by the home run ball. He was also very hittable. Then in his second stint the next year, he was still hittable, but with fewer home runs allowed and fewer strikeouts. He moved on to Boston, threw three innings in 2021 while spending most of the year in the minors and then was a huge part of their bullpen in 2022. It was a great year for him. He threw 65 innings with a 2.22 ERA, 2.55 xERA and 2.50 FIP to go with a 28.8 percent strikeout rate and a 7.4 percent walk rate. That all plays. Those are late-inning/closer numbers.

Then last season, he started off doing more of the same. Through May 15, he threw 17 innings with a 30 percent strikeout rate and slightly elevated 11.4 percent walk rate with a 2.12 ERA and 3.14 FIP. But then he went on the IL with a right teres major strain, which is supposedly near his lat muscle (you could tell me anything here and I’d believe you). After he came back, it was rough. He had a 4.85 ERA/5.31 FIP in 29.2 innings with a 23.9 percent strikeout rate and 12.7 percent walk rate. Those are decidedly not late-inning/closer numbers. He’ll be 30 in a couple of weeks.

Schreiber throws a slider with good spin and he throws that more than any other pitch. In 2022, he got whiffs on 43.1 percent of swings. That dropped to 25 percent last year. He throws a four-seamer that averaged 94.4 MPH in 2022 and dropped to 93.2 in 2023 and was 93.1 MPH before the injury (though he could have been feeling the injury before he went on the IL, to be fair). He also has a sinker that saw velocity dip, but not as much. And he throws the occasional changeup. Color me skeptical that his 2022 isn’t going to be one of those years that a lot of relievers end up having throughout their careers.

Still, there’s a lot to like about adding this slider into the bullpen.

And that’s an arm angle the Royals don’t have much of either. In his career, he’s been incredibly tough on righties with a .217/.276/.340 line allowed while lefties have handled him just fine at .264/.371/.456. Now, looking back to that magical 2022, he held them to a .198/.305/.370 line. So if that can be recreated, maybe there’s hope that he’s more than a right-handed specialist. But lefties hit .300/.456/.533 against him last season. That’s instant pull territory in a world where sometimes a righty has to face a lefty because of the three batter minimum rule.

And they traded a guy who I think is one of their five best pitching prospects to get him. I had Sandlin ranked 12th in the Royals system while Keith Law had him seventh. Baseball America had him ranked 20th. So there’s some variance for sure, but this is about my opinion on Sandlin and I think he is too good of a prospect to trade for a reliever with the questions Schreiber brings. That said, that doesn’t mean that I’m assuredly right about this.

Sandlin does have reliever risk, as all non-elite starting pitching prospects do. He was popping 100 MPH in offseason workouts, but there were some questions if his fastball was going to be enough to work through a lineup multiple times. And Lance Brozdowski had an interesting comment about the fastball that he thought it could limit him as well. Of course, in that same post, he did mention how good his slider and splitter are. And the more obvious point that TINSTAAPP (there is no such thing as a pitching prospect) applies here and trading guys to get big leaguers who might be the ceiling for that prospect is wise.

Personally, I think the ceiling is higher for Sandlin, which is why I didn’t like the deal. But I also am not so hellbent against it that I’m going to rail against it for years like many likely will if Sandlin becomes anything. There are, however, some narratives from fans and analysts alike that I think are odd. I’m not going to explicitly put the responses to my initial reaction in this article because I don’t want to put anyone on blast, but I got some odd ones (in my opinion).

Someone suggested that the Royals need the bullpen help now and we have no idea what a 14th rounder in A-ball will do. Aside from the fact that Sandlin was an 11th rounder who likely would have reached AA if not for an oblique injury, sure, we don’t know what he will do. But I’d also argue that they don’t have nearly as big of a need for the help now as they did three months ago. Had they not signed Chris Stratton or traded for Nick Anderson, I might like this trade more. But they did. The Royals have a lot of their bullpen now locked up in veteran relievers who are a lot more good than great and have a fair amount of downside. Schreiber adds to that. Again, I think he helps the 2024 roster, but relievers are volatile.

Someone else suggested that the Royals have a chance to win a weak division, so why hang on to someone who may not develop? They absolutely have a chance to win a weak division. I’d give them a very small chance at that. Call me a hater or a negative nancy or whatever you want, but I see them as a team ready to win 74-78 games. Which is a MASSIVE improvement. And I do believe that a team can outperform their talent level by 10 games. So yes, they have a chance.

Their floor has raised considerably, but they’re far more likely to be trading guys at the deadline than popping champagne this year. But let’s say they are one player away. Is that player a potentially very good, but probably simply above average reliever? No. If they are really all in on 2024, make a trade that hurts to get a legitimate closer and sign Matt Chapman. I don’t know that I’d like that, but that’s far more likely to put them over the top than a middle reliever who could be a leverage guy.

One person said that the Royals have enough young pitching that may or may not work out. All I’ll say to that is there is never enough young pitching that may or may not work out. The only thing I’ll say about that if I’m wrong is that if they’re willing to spend every offseason to fill the holes because they traded away young pitching that could have worked out, I’m fine with it.

Now here’s the flip side of my argument against all of that. The Royals pitching development has changed. We don’t know yet if it’s changed enough to matter, but it has absolutely changed. If they are going to begin to be able to develop starting pitching with those changes, guys like Sandlin are absolutely fungible. They have Frank Mozzicato, Ben Kudrna, Blake Wolters, Mason Barnett, Chandler Champlain and Anthony Veneziano who are high-end and/or upper-level pitching prospects. They also have Hiro Wyatt, Henry Williams, Tyson Guerrero and Noah Cameron along with others who could develop into something. If they are right and their development can start churning out starters, sure, trade Sandlin for a reliever.

While I’ve meandered a bit here, that brings me to my final point and it’s the prospect community disliking this trade. I’m not the first person to note this and I likely won’t be the last, but I find it interesting that many have spent months bashing the Royals system (and mostly fairly) who criticized the Royals for trading from that same system. This isn’t black and white, so the nuance might get a little lost here, but if the system is so bad and they traded a prospect that has a lot of variance in how good he is for someone who can help today.

Now, Kiley McDaniel was probably the most vocal of the group, and he had Sandlin as the fifth best prospect in the system, so that’s a fair criticism for him, but either the system is really bad and getting anything for these guys is good or they’re maybe not as bad as you have said. I also have a lot of issues with his list, but he’s very good at what he does and that’s another story for another day.

Ultimately, I still don’t like the trade. I’m not 100 percent against it. I’m probably like 60 percent against it, which seems odd that I’d write a couple thousand words about it given how meh I feel, but I wanted to tackle some of the reactions that I found quite odd. To look at the previous roster projection, I think Schreiber is now a lock along with Nick Anderson, James McArthur, Will Smith and Chris Stratton.

I think Matt Sauer has to lose his spot and I think John McMillon does too. They might, but that leaves one spot open now for Carlos Hernandez, Angel Zerpa and the rest of the gang. I’ll stress again how actually unimportant the Opening Day roster is in the grand scheme of things because Smith and Stratton are the only two pitchers without options in the bullpen right now, so there can be a lot of movement throughout the season to get a bunch of different guys 35-40 innings. And this bullpen isn’t without injury risk, so the more the merrier.

When it’s all said and done, a pretty small trade did elicit some pretty big reactions. That’s a good thing for a baseball team that didn’t elicit much of anything for the last couple of seasons.