FORT MYERS, Fla. — The fastball velocity David Sandlin has added since entering professional ball is one of the things that excited the Red Sox the most when they acquired the righty from the Royals for reliever John Schreiber on Feb. 17.
Chief baseball officer Craig Breslow pointed out that Sandlin pitched in the low-90s in college but he has been up to 98-99 mph with his heater in the pros while sitting in the 95-97 mph range.
Sandlin said he isn’t necessarily surprised by how hard he threw last season. The 6-foot-4, 215-pounder began his collegiate career at Eastern Oklahoma State College before transferring to Oklahoma.
“In junior college, I got up to around that velo range. Didn’t sit as high but I could get up there,” Sandlin said. “So I knew the work I was putting in in the weight room and (with mechanics) and everything like that was definitely going to get me there.”
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Kansas City drafted Sandlin in the 11th round (325th overall) out of Oklahoma in 2022. The 23-year-old righty went 4-1 with a 3.38 ERA (58 ⅔ innings, 22 earned runs), 1.19 WHIP, .259 batting average against, 79 strikeouts and 13 walks in 12 starts for Low-A Columbia in 2023. He also made two starts for High-A Quad Cities, allowing four runs, six hits, five walks and eight strikeouts in eight innings.
Sandlin topped out at 98 mph in a game last season, then reached 100 mph for the first time during an offseason workout.
“That’s the hardest pitch I’ve thrown and then I dialed it back realizing it was the first week of February and I’ve got a little bit still to go until the season,” Sandlin said.
He said the velo increase has had to do more with mechanics than anything else.
“I think really just focusing on moving dynamically down the mound,” he said. “Getting my hips and shoulders aligned and just having an athletic, sound movement rather than being static in my load and back leg.”
His Baseball America scouting report called him “a sleeper who could take a jump forward in 2024 if he improves the rest of his arsenal” beyond his fastball.
“I try to kind of stay off that stuff but obviously I have my friends and my parents who are very proud of that stuff and so they’ll send it to me,” Sandlin said. “I’ll try to tell them it doesn’t matter until it happens in the game. But I think my goal is to just go out there and compete every day. Put my team in a position to win no matter where I am, what level I’m at. And then just keep the strikeouts up, walks down, pitch counts down, win at-bats, keep the ball in the yard. Just simple things that make the game a lot easier as a starting pitcher.”
Sandlin also throws a slider, curveball and split-finger fastball. His slider is in the mid-to-upper 80s and Baseball America noted that it has “horizontal break and high spin rates.”
“I’m trying to get a little bit of tighter movement on it, less sweep,” he said. “I don’t know if the rpms (revolutions per minute, how spin rate is measured) are that high. I feel like they’re probably around average.”
Some have referred to his splitter as a split-changeup.
“That’s my changeup pitch,” he said. “I don’t get good pronation on the ball so I switched to a splitter. I think the lengths I made this offseason with that pitch, it’s probably going to be my primary secondary this year. And then the slider is definitely right up there with it.
“I would say it almost tumbles,” he added about the movement on the splitter. “It kind of just falls off the plate. Not a big horizontal movement on it. It just kind of tumbles and tunnels really well off the fastball.”
He throws his curveball much slower than his other three pitches.
“It’s definitely a pitch I feel I can just flip in there for a strike,” he said. “It’s just kind of a show-me pitch for me. I was trying to generate more depth on it this offseason. So it’s definitely something I’ve been working on. But it definitely kills more velocity than the slider and the splitter.”
His splitter is in the same 85-90 mph velo range as his slider.
“So with the curveball, it’s just a low-80s pitch to really change their sight on the ball and to change the timing of the hitter,” he said.
An MLB scout told MassLive that “none of the pitches are plus outside of his fastball velocity” but Baseball America wrote Sandlin is “still refining his arsenal–especially his secondaries–so there’s a chance they continue to improve.” BA added that “the fastball and slider are above-average offerings right now.”
“Being able to throw at least three of those pitches any given day in the strike zone with the good movement profile they have is really the next step for me,” he said. “I think my fastball, where it is, continue to build velocity with that. That’s really what I need to work on with that. Other than that, I like the movement on it. I like how I can play it in the zone. Just getting the slider in the zone a little bit more and getting the splitter in the zone and induce those swings and misses is definitely going to be the next step for me.”
Two MLB scouts told MassLive he needs to improve his control. That said, Sandlin last season averaged only 2.4 walks per nine innings compared to 11.7 strikeouts.
“I think I have good control in the zone but I think I can command the pitches to different parts of the zone better,” he said. “I think that’s really what they’re talking about. And I completely agree. There’s never any part of your game that you can stop working on. I think if I control all nine quadrants of the zone, that will also push me over the top.”
Sandlin was in Arlington, Texas, for his alma mater Oklahoma’s season opener when he got the call about being traded. It was early in the morning. He had just woken up in his hotel room and reset his alarm to sleep in a little later. Then he heard his phone buzzing.
“I was obviously surprised,” Sandlin said. “I got really close to a lot of the guys over there (with the Royals) and the staff, too. But it’s baseball. It’s a job. Stuff happens. Obviously to get traded for a guy like Schreiber one-for-one was a big deal. I was very excited about that. Boston has got great history. So I was excited to get over here and get to work.”
