So with baseball firmly entrenched in the off-season, there will be plenty of Hot Stove discussion. However, as done in the past on the blog, I wanted to take some time to dedicate some posts and series to past Royals players and teams. One of the projects I tried to establish on this blog was the Royals “Hall of Not Forgotten”, a tribute to Royals players who had interesting tenures in Kansas City, in both good and bad ways, long and short term.

I have only done one post in the section of the blog so far (which was on former Royals first-round pick Aaron Crow), but I would like to add more to the section , especially in this lull until pitchers and catchers report. And thus, with the talk on the Cooperstown Hall of Fame, as well as as the Royals Hall of Fame (they will be apparently voting this year), I figured it would be interesting to look at past Royals players who may be eligible or have a case for consideration into the Royals Hall of Fame, even though it is unlikely that they will be inducted. And thus, I decided to focus on five players from the 2000’s to 2010’s era of Royals baseball who most likely would miss out on the Royals Hall of Fame, but have interesting cases nonetheless.

Here are the five players this series of posts will focus on, with each post occurring in the order listed below:

• Billy Butler, Designated Hitter
• Jeff Suppan, Pitcher
• Johnny Damon, Outfielder
• David DeJesus, Outfielder
• Carlos Beltran, Outfielder

Again, I hope to get all these posts in throughout the new year and some posts may be combined for time’s sake. However, I will probably post my retrospective on Butler, whom I have wanted to write on for a while. I also hope to parlay some of these Hall of Not Forgotten pieces into a SABR Bio Project piece, though I will need to publish it on SABR first, and I hope to do at least one during Winter break (though who that will be is yet to be determined).

Anyways, look for the Butler post soon and why he should not be forgotten in Royals lore, even if he may not be a Royals Hall of Fame-worthy player.

It’s going to be a long off-season…especially in this time of COVID.

And thus, it won’t be bad to celebrate some Royals, especially those who played in an era of Royals baseball where they weren’t as appreciated as they should have been…

Which is mostly the case for everyone on that above list…as Royals fans will soon find out through the posts on this blog.