What is often overlooked, but is absolutely critical, is that developers are the clients of administrators.
At least it is in successful development shops. And a development shop is the context here.

System and DB administrators should support the development environment. Much like the janitor keeping the building temperature and humidity reasonable and the place clean.

That is not to say that the developers do not need to be coordinated and disciplined in what they do. The larger the team the more important coordination and disciple are. It's the developer's team leaders and management that needs to focus on keeping this in place. You certainly can't have "free agents, doing their thing".