Philly Front Office

Congratulations, by getting past the enduring pain of the above title and into the body of the article, you have made it further than the Phillies did with Ryne Sandberg. His local career spanned all of 6 total plate appearances before he was sent to Chicago in the worst trade in team history. Let’s relive the horror, shall we?

The Phillies drafted Sandberg out of high school in the 20th round of the 1978 Amateur Draft. He rose steadily through the minors as a shortstop, hitting around .300 at every level (except single A). The plan was for Sandberg to replace aging shortstop Larry Bowa and play between Mike Schmidt at 3rd base and Manny Trillo at 2nd. On September 2, 1981, Sandberg made his MLB debut at just 21 years old. Everything was going great!

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Well, these are the Phillies we are talking about, so things didn’t go as planned. Despite the weird playoff format that saw the defending World Series champions earn a playoff birth in July, the Phillies kept Sandberg on the bench for their meaningless September games.¹ He wouldn’t get his first at bat until 9 days after his debut and his second wouldn’t come for 2 more weeks. In total, Sandberg would come into 13 games, get 6 at bats, and just one hit.

Despite the incredibly small sample size, the Phillies had apparently seen enough to determine that Sandberg was not the answer at shortstop and would simply never dethrone Schmidt or Trillo at their positions. The Phillies traded Sandberg and, ironically the man he was supposed to replace, Larry Bowa, to the Cubs for SS Ivan de Jesus. de Jesus was 29 and fresh off one of the worst seasons in baseball history. He hit sub .200 and finished with just 12 XBHs (0 HRs) and 13 RBI in 460 plate appearances. The Phillies just had to have him! Excellent work, at least you didn’t throw away a future Hall of Famer to get him! Except, that’s exactly what happened.

Sandberg would go on to play 15 seasons for the Cubs, win the MVP award just 3 seasons after the trade, make 10 All-Star teams, win 9 Gold Gloves, and 7 Silver Slugger awards. His 68 WAR was more than enough for him to be elected to the Hall of Fame in 2005, his 3rd year on the ballot. Yikes Phillies.

Ok, ok, it couldn’t have been completely bad, right? Let’s find out. Let’s start with the man they traded for, Ivan de Jesus. After not hitting in Chicago, de Jesus immediately continued not hitting for the Phillies. After 3 seasons, he managed an OPS of .637 and was eventually traded to the Cardinals for Dave Rucker, an absolutely nothing reliever. He did play SS for the 1983 NL Pennant winning team though, so there’s that.

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Wait, so why couldn’t Sandberg play 2nd base? Oh, that’s right, because Manny Trillo was there. Trillo had had a solid couple years for the Phillies, but by 1982 he was basically toast. The Phillies would move him in the offseason along with hotshot prospect Julio Franco for Von Hayes. It was a good move, but so much for Sandberg being blocked at 2nd. Who would play 2nd base for the Phillies throughout Sandberg’s career? Let’s take a look…

• 1983 – Joe Morgan: It was only one year, but the future Hall of Famer still looked good.
• 1984-1988 – Juan Samuel: Samuel was solid for the Phillies and was eventually traded for Lenny Dykstra
• 1989-1990 – Tom Herr: I’ve got nothing
• 1991-1997 – Mickey Morandini: Now where would we be without Harry Kalas pronouncing his name every day?

Yes, it would have been nice to have Ryne Sandberg that whole time, especially when the glory years of the late 70s and early 80s were fading away.

As for Larry Bowa, he would play 3.5 seasons in Chicago of mostly replacement level ball before ending his career in the most awful way…playing 22 games for the Mets. The Phillies weren’t done with him yet though, hiring him to be their manager from 2001 to 2004, just enough time to run another future Hall of Fame infielder out of town, Scott Rolen.

In the end, I just can’t imagine what on earth would cause a team to make this trade. Sandberg was just 22 and had a track record as a good hitter in the minors, yet the Phillies traded him and their 12-year veteran shortstop for one of the worst players in the majors. The Good Phight does a good job of giving all the details of the trade, but nothing about why the Phillies would want de Jesus. 44 years later, it still doesn’t make sense.

All stats courtesy of Baseball Reference.

1. The player’s strike caused MLB to divide the season into halves with the winner of each half earning a playoff birth in each league. ↩︎