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Birthday Notes
I’m writing this on my birthday, the day before I actually publish it on Substack, and it feels a little strange to be back in baseball mode again. As most of you know, I’ve been hard at work on my debut crime novel, Shivering in Hell, which I announced in my most recent post. I’ve also been publishing short fiction through my other newsletter, Powder Blue Pulp, and I haven’t actually written about baseball since I made my preseason predictions back in March.*
*Talk about a trainwreck. The less said about those predictions, the better. I’d like to use my book as an excuse and tell you I wasn’t properly focused on baseball at the time, but if you’ve been around this newsletter for a while, you already know predictions aren’t my strong suit.
Fiction has always been my first love, so I’m honestly a little surprised by how much I’ve missed writing about baseball and how eager I am to get back into it. After all, you didn’t subscribe to Powder Blue Nostalgia to receive book advertisements in your inbox. Presumably, you signed up to get my unique take on baseball history. So let’s get that rolling again!
Unfortunately, there’s a problem. No, it’s not that I’m out of ideas. But as any history writer will tell you, before you can sit down at the keyboard, you have to do your research. I won’t pretend that researching these articles is the same exhausting process as compiling material for a book, but it does take time and effort to get it right, and that kind of time has been in short supply lately.
Don’t worry, I’m ramping it back up, but while I balance research with promoting my book and my son’s little league games and all the other stuff that goes into having a life, I thought I’d try to get back into the groove with some quick-hitting news and notes on what’s going on in the baseball world in 2026. It might not be my usual fare, but it’s hardly unprecedented for PBN. As much as I love talking the history of the game, I’m still an active fan, after all. So think of this as a minor league rehab assignment for a rusty baseball writer, and before you know it, we’ll be back to our normal routine in the Show!*
*Yeah, you read that right. I just compared my little newsletter to the biggest stage of them all, when we all know it’s more like a struggling independent league in rural Wyoming. So what? Aren’t those the kinds of places where you find the true soul of baseball anyway?
I know a lot of my readers are fellow Royals fans, but not all of them. So, in the interest of transparency, I will warn you now that this post will focus heavily on my hometown team. Next week, I’ll get into my thoughts on the rest of the league. And I have plenty in what has been an incredibly strange third of a season for the entire American League, an exciting new slugger from Japan, resurgent Braves, the saga of Fernando Tatis Jr., and the phenomenon that is Shohei Ohtani, among other things. But for now, I’m going to stay in KC.
What happened?
I stopped myself from picking the Royals to win the AL Central this season. I didn’t want to make the same mistake I made in 2025, when I powered past my fears of the Royals regressing after their 2024 postseason appearance and picked them to come out of the Central, only for them to fall short. So I went with Detroit instead.
In 2025, the Royals underachieved. Weak spots in the corner outfield burned them, they didn’t catch the same kind of breaks with the pitching staff’s health as the previous season, and even Witt had a somewhat down season. For him, I should clarify. He was still one of the best players in baseball. But it wasn’t a total loss. Maikel Garcia broke out, Vinnie Pasquantino and Salvador Perez both hit at least thirty home runs and 100 RBI, Noah Cameron made a serious run at AL Rookie of the Year, and they still finished over .500.
This season, on the other hand, has been a total disaster. Vinnie, a traditionally slow starter, has yet to warm up, and Salvy is finally looking old. Garcia, coming off an MVP performance for Venezuela, has been just okay. Young guns Jac Caglianone and Carter Jensen have shown flashes, but have yet to put it together. Their ace, Cole Ragans, has spent most of the season on the IL, along with Kris Bubic, and bullpen has become a dirty word in the city of fountains.*
*It started off with the obviously not healthy Carlos Estevez’s dumpster fire performance on Opening Day in Atlanta, and it’s been smoldering ever since. Estevez has yet to make his second appearance of the season, and Lucas Erceg has not returned to his 2024 form. No one in the bullpen inspires much confidence at this point.
Last season, this team got off to a slow start, and it felt like they pressed the rest of the year to catch up with their own high expectations. They never managed to do that, but they were at least respectable, and hovered around relevancy off and on all season. This year, the bottom has fallen out on a team that expected to contend. They currently sit in last place in the division, twelve games under .500, and the fact that they are tied with Detroit in the cellar proves only one thing. I should never make another prediction.
Bobby Witt Jr.
With the recent news that Aaron Judge is going to be on the IL for an extended period of time, Kansas City’s superstar shortstop is now the betting favorite to win AL MVP. To be fair, I’d like to see a few more dingers on his statline and his batting average above .300, but there’s no question he’s the most complete player in baseball. He’s worth the price of admission on his own, which is good news for Royals fans, because the rest of the team isn’t providing much entertainment. But is that enough to win him the MVP?
With Judge out, if the Royals were even a .500 team, I’d be tempted to hand him the trophy right now. But the Royals aren’t even close to .500, and while that shouldn’t matter for an individual award, we all know team success plays a role. The best thing he has going for him in that respect is it doesn’t appear any team in the AL is all that good.
But Yordan Alvarez looks like he may make a run at the Triple Crown. The Astros aren’t the juggernaut they used to be, and Witt is a far better overall player than Alvarez, who is mostly DH at this point, but the Houston slugger is arguably the best pure hitter in the game. And while the 2012 AL MVP debate proved that the Triple Crown is no longer as universally revered as it used to be, it was still enough to propel Miguel Cabrera over the analytical darling Mike Trout. So regardless of where Kansas City and Houston finish in the standings, if Alvarez accomplishes that feat, it’s hard to picture him going home empty-handed. Otherwise, Bobby Witt should be the favorite.
That raises an even bigger question, however.
Are the Royals in danger of wasting Bobby Witt Jr.?
This might seem like an overreaction to some, but I don’t think it is. Witt is arguably the most talented player in franchise history. Yes, he’s still got a way to go catch George Brett as the franchise icon, but that’s not the point.
In the first twelve full seasons of Brett’s career, the Royals went to the postseason seven times, played in two World Series, and won a championship. They also had two 90-win seasons,* good for only second place back then, but that total would almost certainly have clinched Brett two more playoff lottery tickets, if they had played under today’s postseason format.
*They also won 85 games in 1979. I didn’t look at the overall standings from that season, but that probably would have netted them another postseason appearance in the expanded Wild Card era.
Witt is only in his fifth season. They made the playoffs, perhaps ahead of schedule, in 2024, and 2025 looked to be a bump in the road, but now I’m not so sure. I still believe this franchise is in much better shape than it was during Witt’s second season, a historically bad 2023, but it feels like it’s going in the wrong direction, and could get out of hand fast. I’ve already seen articles talking about how Witt could use a change of scenery, and those writers can go straight to hell. Bobby Witt Jr. doesn’t need a change of scenery. Franchises like KC need to hang on to their stars, and they have already signed Witt to an extension. But now they need to get the team around him right.
Can they be trusted to do so? Frankly, the Royals’ track record shouldn’t fill any fan with optimism. After Brett’s last postseason appearance in 1985, they failed to make the playoffs again in his final eight seasons.* In fact, since 1985, they’ve only made the postseason three times. They had their magical run in 2014-15, resulting in another championship, and they won a Wild Card series with Witt in 2024. Beyond that, it’s been a lot of bad baseball.
*To be fair, they did win 92 games in 1989, which would have won the AL Central, had it existed, and they were at least in contention in 1987, 1993, and 1994, before they were interrupted by the strike.
So what should they do? The AL is historically mediocre this season, and an extended winning streak could drastically change the outlook for this team in a relatively short period of time. But this team has done little to convince even the most optimistic diehard that they have something like that in them.
General Manager JJ Picollo has shown himself to be more transactional than his predecessor, and it’s clear this team is not good enough, which would indicate they need to be active at the trade deadline. But that doesn’t mean they should blow it up. Perhaps I’m thick, but I still don’t believe that a team so many people believed would be a contender is as bad as they’ve looked so far. In my opinion, that means they should be more surgical in their approach, rather than burning the whole thing down.
What does that look like? Who knows? I’m just a schmuck writer. This is why they pay Picollo the big bucks. But if I was advising him, I’d say everything but trading Witt is on the table. Again, that doesn’t mean I think they should bail on everyone else and start over with minor league prospects. That would almost certainly waste most, if not all, of Witt’s prime.
It’s not the ideal position to be working from, but that’s how it goes. The important part is they get it right. Every mistake, no matter how big or small, makes it that much more difficult to optimize their time with a generational talent. You don’t want to trade away Cags for a pitcher who flames out, only for him to hit forty bombs in a new park while Carter Jensen flounders. Or vice-versa.
It’s inevitable that they will take another small step back in the short term. They’ve already taken a big one, so that’s not the issue. They just have to set themselves up to take a significant leap forward over the next few seasons. It’s unfortunate a season that began with such promise has come to that, but that’s where we’re at. A new era begins at the deadline, and owner John Sherman must build on what the Royals begin to do in July by spending money in the offseason. But with a major labor dispute looming, who knows where we go from here.
Non-baseball Notes
It’s been great talking baseball with you all again, and we’re going to do more of it next week. But before I go, I want to mention my other projects real quick.
If you missed my announcement last week, my debut novel will hit bookshelves on September 1, 2026, but you can pre-order it now. It’s called Shivering in Hell, and I’m extremely proud of it. I would love it if you gave it a shot.
Order Shivering in Hell on Kindle
Order Shivering in Hell in paperback
And if you like your fiction in shorter doses, or you enjoy the personal touches I add to my baseball stories and want more of it, you can check out my other newsletter, Powder Blue Pulp. Happy reading, and I hope you all are able to make it out to the ballpark soon!
Thanks for reading Powder Blue Nostalgia, and sticking with me through this slow period. Whether you’re a Royals fan or not, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the first third of the 2026 MLB season.
Happy birthday! (Well, late birthday, I guess.)
Happy Birthday!