The Sunday Ramble

Hey! Let’s fire the Ramble back up for 2026. A reminder for you older subscribers, and a bit of an explanation for those of you new to the newsletter, the Sunday Ramble (when it’s actually published) is a mish-mash of baseball-related thoughts rattling around my brain from the previous week. Sometimes, it’s Royals adjacent. Sometimes not. It’s just meant to be a fun way to keep the general baseball talk going. If that’s not appealing to you and you’re here for only Royals content, feel free to hammer that delete button. But don’t unsubscribe! Regular Royals coverage will continue.

Happy New Year!

A soft market for Bo Bichette?

This, from known Scott Boras mouthpiece Jon Heyman, caught my eye on Saturday:

It feels like Heyman is dropping some chum into a backyard pond. Desperate and perhaps misguided, you know?

I mentioned Bichette a couple of months ago as kind of pie-in-the-sky sort of wishful thinking for the Royals, figuring he would score a seven-year deal at around $25 million per. The Royals could afford that I argued, but that was prior to tendering a contract to both Jonathan India and Michael Massey. Yeah, Bichette could still slide over to second and be an amazing upgrade, but the Royals sort of shoved all their chips in for one final season with India.

While the Royals were never serious players for Bichette’s services, I can’t help but feel as though the market just isn’t developing for the former Toronto shortstop.

Heyman, who dropped the note about the Phillies being interested (while Bichette is ultra young!), also sent out a New Year’s Day tweet about the Cubs, Yankees and Dodgers having interest. The usual big market names. Weird! It’s almost as if Boras is trying to drum up interest…and a bidding war.

The only team linked to Bichette in the entire month of December was the Boston Red Sox and his former team, the Toronto Blue Jays. The market just hasn’t developed as one would expect.

Feels like an opportunity for a team to swoop in and pick up an “ultra young” free agent at something of a discount. Unless those dastardly Phillies and Dodgers are just driving up the price.

Remaining top free agents

It’s not just Bichette who is having issues generating serious interest. Of the FanGraphs top 50 free agents, four of the top five remain unsigned. And six of the top 10, with Kyle Tucker, Alex Bregman, Framber Valdez, Cody Bellinger and Ranger Suárez all searching for deals. The industry consensus has five of those guys fishing for six years of committment at somewhere north of $150 million. Tucker has always been the headliner at an industry-estimated deal around $375 million for close to 10 years.

I’m thinking that those types of deals aren’t going to be happening. Not for all of those guys.

There’s been a run on relief pitching with the middle tier of free agents mostly secure with their new deals. I just can’t help but wonder if teams being adverse to giving five or more years to players over 30 years old combined with the actual number of teams willing to pay the kind of money the top free agents are looking for, is finally squeezing guys out. Add the luxury tax that’s in play for a handful of teams and the prospect of forfeiting a draft pick to sign all but Bregman…Oh, and there’s a lockout coming in all likelihood after the 2026 season.

While there have been deals where players like Josh Naylor (5 years, $92.5 million) and Kyle Schwarber (5 years, $150 million) have returned to the teams they played for last year, the big free agent splashes like the ones seen for Dylan Cease going from San Diego to Toronto (7 years, $210 million) and Pete Alonso moving to Baltimore from New York (5 years, $155 million) have been slow to develop.

I’m starting to think there will be a couple of pillow deals floating around with some guys having to seriously recalibrate their expectations.

Cool market for players from Japan

Speaking of slow to develop free agent deals, the market for players coming over from Japan is absolutely tanking. MLB Trade Rumors predicted eight years and $180 million for cornerman Munetaka Murakami while FanGraphs had him at seven years and $154 million. He signed with the Chicago White Sox for two years and $34 million.

Meanwhile, 27-year-old right-hander Tatsuya Imai was regarded as the best foreign starting pitcher of this class. MLBTR had him at six years and $150 million. FanGraphs was at five years and $100 million. He signed last week with the Houston Astros for three years and $54 million with opt outs after each season.

Switching leagues isn’t easy and success in the NPB doesn’t guarantee similar outcomes in the Major Leagues. It seems as though teams are shying away from paying inflated prices for guys who may have some difficulty adapting to a new baseball environment. If teams are going to budget $100+ million to a free agent player, they want to feel confident in their projections for him going forward. There’s just more uncertainty about players coming over from Japan. Also, as noted above, the big contract markets have been extraordinairly slow to develop this winter.

The Blue Jays continue to splash the free agent cash, though. They signed cornerman Kazuma Okamoto to a four-year, $60 million deal on Saturday. That’s pretty much in line with the industry predictions on his deal. Sometimes it only takes one.

Let’s remember some Royals

In a FanGraphs mailbag this week, a reader asked who had the highest WAR among players who never appeared in an All-Star Game. I was a bit surprised to see two former Royals pitchers make the list of five when it comes to fWAR: Charlie Liebrandt and Dennis Leonard.

Both pitchers were stalwarts of the Royals rotation during periods of success. Leonard was a strikeout king (as much as one could be a strikeout king) in the late 1970’s. A horrific knee injury knocked him to the sidelines for over two seasons in 1983. I was at the game where Leonard was injured. It was eerily similar to seeing Alex Gordon go down in the outfield in 2015.

Leibrandt was a little less heralded, but just as important, in a rotation full of younger pitchers as the Royals won their first World Series back in 1985.

I’ve always though of Liebrandt as something of a hard-luck starting pitcher. Especially when it came to Octoberr. Witness:

• In Game Four of the 1985 ALCS against the Toronto Blue Jays, Leibrandt shut out the Jays for eight innings on five hits and one walk. The Royals could barely score against Toronto ace Dave Stieb and held just a 1-0 lead. Leibrandt started teh ninth and promptly allowed a leadoff walk and a double from Lloyd Moseby that tied the game. Dan Quisenberry relieved and couldn’t stop the bleeding and Leibrandt was hung with the loss.
• In Game Two of the 1985 World Series, Leibrandt again was throwing a shutout through eight innings. This time, the Royals built a 3-0 lead against the Cardinals. Alas, Leibrandt was allowed to face seven batters in the ninth, allowing a single, a walk and three doubles. Again, Leibrandt took the loss.
• In Game Six in 1985, Leibrandt shut out the Cardinals through seven. Like the ALDS, the Royals held a slim 1-0 lead for their starter. This time, Leibrandt was undone by a pair of singles and a walk to tie the game. This time, though, he was spared through the magic of Jorge Orta and Dane Iorg.
• Leibrandt also lost back-to-back World Series Game Sixes while pitching for the Atlanta Braves in the early 1990’s. He gave up the infamous home run to Kirby Puckett (“We’ll see you tomorrow night!”) in 1991 and a go-ahead two-run double to Dave Winfield in 1992. Hey, if you’re going to get beat in the World Series, at least go down at the hands of future Hall of Famers.

Despite the October heartache, Leibrandt was a key starter for a Royals franchise desperate to turn things around after a wretched 1983 season when they finished 20 games behind the Chicago White Sox in the AL West. It was that winter that the Royals overhauled their staff, committing to guys who were in their minor league system, including Leibrandt, who had arrived in June of 1983 in a trade with Cincinnati for Bob Tufts.

The Royals rotation to open the 1983 season looked like this:

LHP - Larry Gura
RHP - Dennis Leonard
RHP - Vida Blue
RHP - Steve Renko
LHP - Paul Splittorff

Fast-forward 12 months and this was the Royals rotation:

RHP - Bud Black
LHP - Paul Splittorff
LHP - Larry Gura
RHP - Mark Gubicza
LHP - Danny Jackson

Splittorff was jettisoned after just two starts, replaced by Bret Saberhagen. Leibrant arrived from Omaha in June. One year later…championship.

Leibrandt was never the best pitcher on those late 80’s Royals teams, but he was steady. During his prime, he accumulated 17.5 fWAR in four and a half seasons, a stretch where he posted a 3.38 ERA to go along with a 2.5 BB/9 and a 4.5 SO/9.

Aside from being a key starter for the postseason teams in the mid-80s, the lefty ranks eighth in franchise history in innings pitched (1,257), 10th in ERA (3.60), ninth in complete games (34) and is tied for seventh in shutouts (10). He ranks seventh among pitchers in bWAR (22.9) It’s a shame that Leibrandt hasn’t been inducted into the Royals Hall of Fame.

Royals Hall of Fame

Speaking of the Royals Hall of Fame, I was a bit remiss in writing about the ballot for that shrine this winter. Fan voting closed a couple of weeks ago. The candidates were:

Carlos Beltrán
Billy Butler
Johnny Damon
Wade Davis
Jarrod Dyson
Alex Gordon
Kelvin Herrera
Joakim Soria
Yordano Ventura

Note: Thanks to Hoikus in the comments, I realize I was looking at last year’s Royals Hall of Fame ballot. Thanks for nothing, Google! Anyway, just swap out Lorenzo Cain for Alex Gordon and it’s all good! Also new to the ballot in 2025 was Greg Holland and Alcides Escobar. So I missed a perfect opportunity to lobby for HDH to go in together. Shame!

Of course, the team Hall of Fame is much different from the Baseball Hall of Fame. Still, I would vote for Carlos Beltrán, who broke in with the Royals and will probably, at the end of this month, find out he’s garnered enough support to get a plaque in Cooperstown. Wouldn’t it be strange if he was in the National Baseball Hall of Fame and not in the Royals one?

Alex Gordon is another no-doubt selection on this ballot for me. He’s also on the National Baseball Hall of Fame ballot for the first time this year. I’m a few years from having a vote there (yes, really), but if I had one for this election cycle, I would throw him a vote just so he wouldn’t be shut out. His decline was a brutal one, but for a run of about five years beginning in 2011, he was one of the premier outfielders in the league.

I would also throw a vote at Wade Davis. Once he moved to the bullpen after coming over from Tampa, the dude was one of the best, if not the best, reliever in baseball for a three year stretch. And he provided plenty of iconic moments during the championship run with the most memorable for me being his performance in Game Six of the ALCS against the Blue Jays where he entered in the eighth inning with the go-ahead on base and got out of the jam. He then waited out a 45 minute rain delay and the Royals scoring the go-ahead run in the bottom of the eight before working around a single, a couple of steals, the second of which put the tying run on third with nobody out, and a walk before securing the Royals second consecutive AL pennant. The most bad ass pitching performance I’ve ever witnessed. The Wade Davis Experience, indeed.

I assume honorees will be announced soon. Induction ceremonies will be sometime in the summer.