Newly Acquired Red Sox Pitching Prospect Reportedly Set For Breakout Season

Boston has struggled to develop pitchers for decades

The Boston Red Sox are off to a strong start thanks to an unexpectly lights out pitching staff.

It appears that newly acquired pitching coach Andrew Bailey is as good as advertised -- likely better. The early season results make it much easier to buy into Red Sox chief baseball officer Craig Breslow's vision -- which placed a large focus on overhauling the pitching development system.

The pipeline does not feature many highly-touted hurlers as only five of the Red Sox's top 25 prospects are pitchers. The quintet features a pair of newly acquired hurlers, Richard Fitts and David Sandlin. The former is the highest rated of the duo but the latter appears to have just as much upside.

Baseball America's Geoff Pontes listed 20 pitching prospects he felt were primed for breakout campaigns and gave Sandlin some shine.

"Acquiring the underrated righthander was a quiet victory for Craig Breslow’s Red Sox regime," Pontes wrote Friday. "An organization light on pitching prospects with real upside potential, Sandlin represented a departure on a smaller scale from the aversion to acquiring pitching at the minor league level. Sandlin sits mid-90s with a fastball that features above-average ride and run, pairing it with a mid-80s slider with sweep, a firm split-change and low-80s two-plane breaking curveball.

"Sandlin misses bats with all of his pitches, though none are plus swing and miss offerings, and showed above-average command of his fastball, slider and changeup trio in 2023. He will begin 2024 with High-A Greenville."

Sandlin posted a 3.51 ERA with an 87-to-18 strikeout-to-walk ratio, .253 batting average against and a 1.22 WHIP in 66 2/3 innings pitched across 14 starts between the Single-A Columbia Fireflies and High-A Quad Cities River Bandits.

It cost Boston right-handed reliever John Schreiber to acquire Sandlin from the Kansas City Royals, who was a solid high-leverage arm for Boston. Given the amount of young arms infused into the big-league bullpen paired with the desperate need for pitching prospects, Breslow was wise to make the swap.

Now it's up to Sandlin to live up to the hype.

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