The Sunday Ramble

Ramblings on a reunion with Zack Greinke, a landing spot for Dayton Moore and the lack of box scores in the newspaper.

Surprise! Some bonus Royals (and MLB) content for your Sunday morning.

I’ve been kicking around doing something in this vein for quite some time. Who knows if this will be a regular thing (I’m not great at the whole time management or sticking to a schedule thing) but why not try something new? The goal is to hit a few brief notes on the Royals and whatever else is occupying space in my mind. If that’s something you would be interested in, great!

On a personal note, this year exceeded my expectations for this modest little newsletter. Subscriptions are up and I’ve been getting some solid feedback. Most of it has been positive! So thank you for subscribing and reading. If you’re not a subscriber, go ahead and bang this button. It’s free and I promise not to spam your inbox.

If you’re already a subscriber, thank you! The favor I would ask of you is, would you mind sharing this newsletter with your fellow Royals fans? With Twitter circling the social media drain, word of mouth (or email forwards) will be essential to the growth and sustainability of this newsletter. I would appreciate it if you could help spread the word.

In her newsletter (who doesn’t have a newsletter these days?), Anne Rogers of MLB.com noted that the Royals only pending free agent is starting pitcher Zack Greinke. Greinke, who signed a one-year, $13 million deal last March turned out to be a proper investment for the club, finishing with a 1.9 fWAR, the second-best mark among Kansas City pitchers. In fact, he and Brady Singer were the only pitchers who finished with an fWAR greater than 1.0. About that new pitching coach…

It goes without saying that Greinke will not get a qualifying offer from the Royals, but it does sound like he’s open to a return. Rogers reports the Royals are interested. Jon Heyman from the New York Post writes that Greinke expects to pitch in 2023. I got the sense that Greinke truly enjoyed his encore with the Royals, serving as the senior member of the youth-laden pitching staff. If both parties are interested, there’s no reason Greinke can’t be back.

Greinke missed time in June with a flexor tendon strain and again in August with what was termed “forearm tightness.” He threw 137 innings, his fewest (in a non-Covid season) since 2007 when he split time between the bullpen and the rotation for the Royals. Despite the strong performance, his strikeout rate tumbled. If Greinke does return, I will bet it would be for less than the $13 million he earned last year. Maybe $10 million—with some incentives to push it to last sesaon’s number—gets it done?

As long as Greinke is willing to pitch, the Royals should be willing to bring him back.

Pop quiz! Only four Royals played the entire season on the active major league roster. Can you name them? Answer below.

In the same notes article from Heyman linked above, he writes that Dayton Moore may be headed to Texas to work with the Rangers and Chris Young. Given their Kansas City connection, that doesn’t seem all that far-fetched. Moore would act as a special assistant or advisor or some such capacity. Not a bad landing spot—and situation—for Moore.

I’ve written in this space that I’m a bit old school when it comes to my postseason tastes. The Wild Card wasn’t a particular favorite, but I came to begrudgingly appreciate it. The second Wild Card was fine by me because the one-game playoff meant both teams were forced to prove their mettle from the jump. And it gave us an elimination game right off the bat.

Three Wild Cards is a bit too much. But Major League Baseball has never truly been interested in seeing the best teams play for the championship. They like revenue; extra layers of playoff baseball provides plenty of that.

I’m not enough of a baseball curmudgeon that I can’t admit this October (and early November) was fantastic from a baseball standpoint. The Phillies may have been the sixth seed out of the National League but they were extremely fun to watch and they certainly played as if they belonged. The fear in adding teams to the postseason party is that it will dilute the quality of games and devalue the 162 regular season games. With Philadelphia, we saw the opposite.

The Phillies were a team that began to gel once they made a replacement at manager. It turns out 162 wasn’t enough for them to prove they were one of the top regular season teams in the league. They really hit their stride in October. Sure, a hot team can come in and crash the party. Likewise, a team with a superstar who rises to the occasion can ultimately go far.

The Phillies didn’t phizzle (see what I did there?), and were competitive the entire postseason. They were fun as hell and absolutely belonged. Hell, in another year, they could’ve won the entire thing. Houston is an absolute juggernaut. This World Series was a ton of fun. So were the rounds that preceded it.

I’m happy for Dusty Baker. Yordan Alvarez is a very, very bad man. Jeremy Peña makes you dream a little about the destiny of Bobby Witt, Jr. The Astros bullpen can make you think of how the Royals rolled to their last championship. Houston will never shed their baggage from 2017 and even though only five players remain from that team, I don’t think they really should. What they did was that egregious. I saw an alert on my phone in the aftermath that actually noted that this title was “clean.” My first thought to that was, “It’s a little too early to say.” Houston did that to themselves.

Free agency starts in five days. Pitchers and catchers report in around 100.

Turns out George Brett was basically a reference for Pedro Grifol during his interview process with the White Sox. (It’s not a coincidence that Grifol will wear number five as the skipper for the Sox.) Brett gave an interview to the Parkins and Spiegel Show on 670 The Score in Chicago, which you can listen to here.

It’s hardly surprising that Brett would vouch for Grifol to owner Jerry Reinsdorf. Brett knows everyone in baseball. At least the executives. As usual, a ton of interesting tales were told during his segment. (Brett got Chris Getz into his country club while Getz was with the Royals!) Then he dropped this beauty on box scores.

“It all started when, god, USA Today and the local paper, they don’t even put in box scores anymore. You notice that? I used to love to get up in the morning, and there’s not many guys I follow in baseball on other teams, but now in order for me to do that, I’ve got to go to MLB.com, pull up box scores and I’ve got to start clicking all these frickin’ buttons. Just give me a frickin’ newspaper with all the information I need. It’s not that frickin’ hard, is it? Jesus Christ, it just drives me crazy. And they wonder why baseball is losing its popularity? I think that might be one of the reasons.”

I will argue that it’s not on the newspapers. Um…that’s not the way to reach young people or shore up eroding popularity. But I am with Brett that it’s a shame there’s not a localized spot for the previous day’s box scores. If there was a service that provided a pdf of box scores with a brief recap (as Brett says, like USA Today used to do), I’d sign up for that in a heartbeat.

I do love a box score.

Pop quiz answer! The four Royals to spend the entire season on the active major league roster were Scott Barlow, Nicky Lopez, Ryan O’Hearn and Bobby Witt Jr.

Thanks for reading. Have a great Sunday.