Everyone was focusing on the wrong thing in the David Sandlin/John Schreiber trade

It’s fine!

On February 17, the Kansas City Royals traded pitching prospect David Sandlin to the Boston Red Sox in exchange for relief pitcher John Schreiber. Sandlin, who turned 23 in the intervening time between the trade and this piece, had pitched well in 12 A-ball starts last year and was a potential breakout candidate. Schreiber, who turns 30 in March, is an established bullpen arm who is under team control for three more years.

The trade itself was totally reasonable. Relief pitchers aren’t the most valuable thing on the market, and Schreiber is solid moreso than elite. Likewise, Sandlin is a decent but flawed prospect. There’s a world in which he ends up as a legit MLB starter, sure. But there are way more worlds in which he never makes it to the big leagues. The website Baseball Trade Values doesn’t have the final word, but the trade was accepted by their model (and actually dubbed it an overpay by Boston). At the end of the day, this is a low-impact trade for both clubs.

The internet, however, had a field day with this trade, and people were mad about it for every conceivable reason. ESPN Baseball Insider Kiley McDaniel called it “bad strategy” and that “the trade doesn’t make any sense for KC.”

Elsewhere on the internet, Royals fans and writers were mad about it because they agreed, and others were mad about it because they thought the McDaniels of the world were being hypocritical. Kevin O’Brien at Royals Reporter quote tweeted that McDaniels tweet with thoughts of his own; at over 57,000 views, it clearly struck a chord. Kev pointed out that it felt weird for prospect hounds to talk about how bad the Royals’ farm system was only to turn around and also criticize the Royals for trading their prospects because they are good.

Preston Farr then wrote an article titled “What exactly are we all doing here?” where he elaborated on Kevin’s tweet. Preston wrote that Kansas City has “faced industry bias for some time in the farm system rankings” and argued that the system was better than had been ranked.

In this spirit of disagreement and unhappiness, I must admit that I pretty much disagree with everyone here. I don’t think McDaniel is correct in that it’s bad strategy. I don’t really think that the argument that there’s hypocrisy going on with prospect writers is really true. And I also don’t agree that the Royals farm system is really good, actually, so that the Sandlin trade doesn’t hurt very much.

That’s because everyone is dancing around the big problem, which is this: the core issue with this trade has nothing to do with Sandlin or Schreiber or even the strategy behind it. Again, this is a reasonable trade on both ends. And while it may seem odd to trade a pitching prospect for a reliever of all things, Schreiber’s years of control means that, if the Royals bail on the “we’re winning now” thing, they can easily get somebody like Sandlin right back in return for Schreiber.

The core issue of this trade is that the Royals’ farm system is so bereft of top end talent that trading Sandlin seems like trading a top prospect, and that is what’s throwing off everyone’s take here. In a good system, Sandlin probably ranks in the 15-20 range, and if this trade happens then, no one bats an eye.

It is not Sandlin’s fault that Asa Lacy was a no show and that Gavin Cross fell off a cliff last year, or that the Royals got too cutesy in the 2023 draft when a much better player at the same position was available. or that the Royals decided to take the 42nd-best player at seventh overall in the 2021 draft. It’s not Sandlins’ fault that the Royals were run by an increasingly out of touch president of baseball operations until not even a year and a half ago.

My ultimate take on this trade is one that I just haven’t seen anywhere: it’s fine! Teams trade players like Sandlin for players like Schrieber all the time and it’s almost never particularly consequential for either party. What everyone’s really angsty about is that the Royals farm system is significantly lacking right now. And hey, I get it. But Sandlin is a fine prospect. If the organization does its job, there will be more like him.