Cautionary tale of the infamous Sandberg trade

When I heard Chicago Cubs great Ryne Sandberg died Monday at the age of 65, I soon remembered how badly trading young talent for a win-now veteran can backfire. That’s precisely why Sandberg is remembered as a Cubs great and not a Philadelphia Phillies great.

A 20th round draft pick by the Phillies in 1978 out of North Central High School in Spokane, Washington, Sandberg made his major league debut with the Phils in 1981, a September call-up back when big league teams could expand their active rosters to 40 players for the final month of the regular season. Sandberg played 13 games for Philadelphia before being traded in the offseason to the Cubs for veteran shortstop Ivan De Jesus, a trade that quickly became infamous among Phillies fans.

At the time, Philly fans were up in arms about parting with the other player included in the trade, fan-favorite Larry Bowa. It wasn’t long though — probably somewhere in the midst of Sandberg’s National League MVP season in 1984 — that the “Larry Bowa trade” rapidly became known as the “Ryne Sandberg trade.”

Bowa deserved top billing at the time, a player who was notorious for a temperamental charisma perfectly suited for the City of Brotherly Love. Bowa played 12 seasons in Philadelphia, won two National League Gold Gloves at shortstop, and held the record with a .991 fielding percentage at the position in 1979. He was also a playoff hero who batted .349 throughout the 1980 postseason during the franchise’s first world championship run. He later returned to manage the Phillies from 2001-04, and returned yet again as the team’s bench coach in 2014 in a full-circle moment when Sandberg, himself, was managing in Philadelphia.

Sandberg, however, is an undisputed legend. Playing all of his 15 full big league seasons with the Cubs, he was a 10-time NL All-Star, nine-time NL Gold Glover at second base, was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2005, and, in 2016, was ranked by ESPN as the No. 6 best all-time second baseman in major league history.

Why in the world would the Phillies trade a burgeoning legend, you ask? Well, within the interworking of the early-1980s Phillies, there were a few viable reasons, the main one being the Phillies had a depth of infield prospects in their organization at the time.

Julio Franco was a year older than Sandberg, but a year behind him on the organizational ladder. With both playing shortstop in the minor leagues, Franco was more projectable at the position, as he demonstrated by playing his first five big league seasons at short after the Phillies traded him to Cleveland in 1983.

The other promising infield prospect at the time was Juan Samuel, who was one year younger than Sandberg, and was considered the premium power prospect of the three after his professional debut season for the Low-A Central Oregon Phillies of the Northwest League in 1980, belting 17 home runs in 298 at-bats as a 19-year-old. He had the Phillies feeling even better after the 1982 season — when Sandberg slashed .271/.312/.372 with 32 stolen bases as a rookie for the Cubs — when Samuel blew the roof off the Carolina League with the High-A Peninsula Pilots, slashing .320/.373/.573 with 28 home runs.

Samuel went on to an impressive big league career, and in 1987 even matched his total of 28 home runs with the Phillies. His career, however, turned into the least spectacular of the Phillies’ three infield prospects, with the most noteworthy statistic on the back of the baseball card for the three-time All-Star being his leading the NL in strikeouts four straight years.

More to the point of why the Phillies traded the farm in the early 1980s was because they were in win-now mode. The team’s general manager at the time, Paul Owens, is a Philadelphia legend, one whose reputation survived even the Sandberg trade. He served as GM from 1972-84, and even took over as field manager in 1983 when the team was one game above .500 in 1983 and led them back to the World Series that same year, knocking off the Dodgers in the NL Championship Series before falling to the Baltimore Orioles in the World Series.

So, Owens’ win-now vision had its merits, even if it was exacerbated by panic after the MLB strike of 1981. At the time of the strike, the Phillies were on top of the world. Not only were they the reigning world champions, they were in first place in the NL East when the league went on strike on June 12, 1981. When play resumed after 51 days, the Phillies went a mere 25-27. Because of the split-season playoff format, the Phillies still qualified for the postseason, but lost to the Montreal Expos in the first-ever NLDS.

Three-and-a-half months later, Sandberg was traded to the Cubs. And the Phillies wouldn’t win another World Series until 2008.

The Giants can look at the current Phillies roster and be reminded of the perils of win-now trades. Philadelphia’s longstanding pitching ace Zack Wheeler, who came up with the Giants, never pitched a game in the bigs for San Francisco as he was traded to the New York Mets in 2011 for 44 games of Carlos Beltran. Wheeler is still going strong, being named to his third All-Star team this season.

Shoot, the Giants can look across to the opposing dugout this week and see two-time NL All-Star Bryan Reynolds manning right field for the Pirates. The Giants traded Reynolds to Pittsburgh in 2018, and the guy they got for him, Andrew McCutchen, is back with the Bucs, and hit a home run Monday night against San Francisco.

My point is, don’t be surprised if the “Rafael Devers trade” that was widely celebrated by Giants fans is someday remembered historically as the “Kyle Harrison trade.”

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RIP, Ryno. I was always in awe watching you play.

Terry Bernal is a sports writer for the Daily Journal. His views are his own. Please contact him by email at terry@smdailyjournal.com, or via phone at (650) 344-5200 x109.