stinks now and it bites you later, but they neded Scrabble at the time. Cistulli was onto Schrock, but he wasn't even a Nats top 10 back then. I can live with that turning into a player. It probably helps Rizzo in the next deal because it shows he doesn't offer chicken poop when he says he is offering chicken salad
He wasn't a Nats top 10 because the people who do those lists largely don't seem to watch actual baseball games. They just stick the high draft picks and expensive international signings into the rankings and then move out the ones who flop, replacing them with the next year's high draft picks and expensive signings.
This is not to say Schrock is heaven's gift to baseball, but at the time of the trade he was 21, OPSing well over .800 in high-A, was hitting everything hard to all fields, and could clearly stick at a middle IF position. Regardless of draft position and rodential stature, most teams don't - and the Nationals then didn't - have 10 prospects who have more potential than that. For example, he was ranked in the prospect services behind Andrew Stevenson - who is older and had worse stats at the same levels as Schrock, plus a similar rodential stature, an ugly swing, and fringe positional issues.
Why? Well, Stevenson was a 2nd round pick and hadn't done enough to justify becoming a non-prospect yet. Lo and behold, he got there. Funny how being a high draft pick doesn't help in the long run when your swing looks like my niece raking leaves.
