Royals continue to reshape their bullpen

The wheeling and dealing isn't over as John Schreiber joins the Royals from Boston.

Spring camp is open with pitchers and catchers reporting for duty, but that won’t prevent Royals General Manager JJ Picollo from continuing to operate like it’s the second day of the Winter Meetings.

On Saturday, the Royals struck a deal with the Boston Red Sox, sending minor league starter David Sandlin in exchange for right-handed reliever John Schreiber. Schreiber was eligible for arbitration for the first time this winter and has three seasons of team control remaining. He will be 30 in a couple of weeks.

Sometimes, things get a little topsy-turvy if you know what I mean. As in, it’s just a little strange seeing the Red Sox in the position of looking to shave payroll. It’s even stranger seeing the Royals being their trade partner in that situation. Boston trims a whopping $1.175 million off books by making this deal.

Schreiber comes to the Royals with a four-pitch mix: a four-seamer, two-seamer, slider and change. It’s the slider that’s the difference maker here. Once he was plucked by Boston from Detroit on waivers, Schreiber started throwing it more than any other pitch in his arsenal. The results have been solid as he’s limited opposing bats to a .185 batting average against the slider last year and a .166 BA in 2022.

His slider is a little more of a sweeper as the spin rate on the pitch is well above average and features on average 15 inches of horizontal break, a good five inches greater than league average. Schreiber gets a whiff on it about a quarter of the time.

There’s a bit of funk in that delivery so you can see how he can confound right-handed hitters with a slider that glides toward the first base side of the plate. (I was looking for swing and miss on his slider to use here and there were a couple of opportunities to use a Salvador Perez plate appearance. That feels like low-hanging fruit.) Schreiber is very much a guy to use against right-handed bats. Lefties can see him a bit better and will work him for walks. They are also much more likely to barrel the ball from that side of the plate.

Instead of Salvy looking slider silly against Schreiber, how about Vladimir Guerrero Jr.?

It’s a trade for a pitcher so you know where this is going…injury risk. Schreiber spent time on the injured list last summer with a shoulder strain. It was quite a bit of time as he was sidelined on the 60-day IL for a couple of months. Before the injury he was pitching well, sporting a 2.12 ERA while limiting opponents to a .233 batting average. He was throwing strikes 63 percent of the time.

The good news is, when he returned from his injury he was still throwing strikes at the same rate. The bad news is he had a difficult time keeping runs off the board, with a 4.85 ERA. His strikeout rate also tumbled going from around 30 percent before injury to 24 percent after. Boston also used him as an opener on a couple of occasions.

To get Schreiber, the Royals are parting with Sandlin, a right-hander who was the Royals’ 19th-best prospect according to Baseball America. The Royals drafted him in 2022 in the 11th round and signed him to an above-slot bonus. Sandlin had a promising ’23 season, finishing with a 3.44 ERA and 6.5 percent walk rate while punching out 32 percent of batters faced while splitting time between Columbia and Quad Cities.

Sandlin is a starter, but there’s some talk about him moving to the bullpen where his fastball/slider combo will play up even more. BA says both offerings are currently “above average.” There’s actually a little bit of risk I see here in the Royals trading away a young arm for a bullpen piece. Sure, Sandlin is a long way from the majors at this point but he vibes as one of those guys who puts it all together and becomes a steady, back-of-the-rotation arm. There’s a bit of potential value there, and if he maxes that out, the Royals’ return of a middle reliever will not be commensurate.

There’s a ton of variance of where Sandlin slots into the Royals org as a prospect. Keith Law at The Athletic penciled him in at number seven in the system. Alex Duval at the great Royals Farm Report rates him as number four and the best pitching prospect in the system.

Then, yesterday, Sandlin posted a video on Instagram of himself throwing 100 off the mound already and I am ready to get hurt again. Back on the bandwagon. Ready to fall of the wagon. Whatever the term you want to use, use it. Sandlin has the best combination of stuff, experience, and command in the system, giving him the slight edge here over Mozzicato and Kudrna.

The equally great Preston Farr at Royals Farm to Fountains rates Sandlin as the Royals’ ninth-best pitching prospect.

It’s a shame that David Sandlin’s season was cut short due to injury because he was rolling for a good portion of the season. He has plenty of experience after spending three seasons at the college level, so the Royals should feel comfortable sticking him back in Quad Cities to start the season. Sandlin’s two best offerings are his fastball and slider, with the slider offering some strong horizontal break. I expect him to get the call-up to NW Arkansas by season’s end.

While the Royals’ farm system lacks any real pizzaz and generally rates among the worst in the game, there are rumblings amongst the prospect hounds that the system is assembling a bit of depth. Sandlin is part of that. A prospect with upside but who is pitching in a league where he’s older than most of the hitters he’s facing and had his season cut short due to injury. The truth is, Sandlin is a 23-year-old starter who has thrown a grand total of 68 professional innings, with 58 of those coming in A-ball. While I agree that he may be the arm with the most upside in the system, that’s just a buzzy way of saying that, while he’s done well in the minors, he hasn’t really proven much as a pro.

Look, you never want to trade a true prospect for a reliever. It’s just not good baseball sense. And you probably don’t want that prospect to be a guy who ends up in a rotation making 30-odd solid, if unspectacular, starts a year. Not with how much starting pitching is going for on the open market and especially when your organization traditionally has had difficulting developing those types of pitchers. And the Royals aren’t necessarily “going for it” with a swap like this. They’re simply attempting to shore up a position that was a weakness the year before.

Could this trade come back to haunt Picollo and his staff? Certainly. That’s the danger in dealing prospects. The question on the flip side is, does this make the major league team better? I think it does but by an incremental amount. Personally, I’m lukewarm on the trade. I just don’t get excited about bringing in another bullpen arm, but tip my cap to the Royals for continuing to assemble depth in the relief corps. Sorry to be a cliché, but we’ll have a better handle on how to grade this deal in a couple of years.

If Schreiber is healthy he’s another bullpen lock for this team. If you’re going by my roster projection, that means Carlos Hernández or John McMillon are in the danger zone. Or, if there’s true competition for the fifth starter role, the loser could open the year not in the Royals’ bullpen as a long man, but in Omaha. Depth in the bullpen is a good thing.

As for a corresponding move, with spring camps officially open, the 60-day injury list is once again an option. Kyle Wright, who is out for the season with a shoulder injury of his own, slides off the 40-man roster and onto the IL to open up the space. Don’t forget, Kris Bubic is another option for the 60-day IL, should Royals General Manager JJ Picollo continue to hunt for ways to improve the team.

At this point, “transactional” isn’t just an empty buzzword for Picollo. It’s an ethos. The man has been incredibly busy this winter, reshaping the roster and shoring up positions of weakness. I don’t think “Trader JJ” works for a nickname, though. We’re going to have to workshop this.