Java's "runtime needs" are a lot simpler than Python's - it's very easy to create a jar that works on any JVM back to 8 (which everyone has) or even earlier - although the language is unpleasantly verbose for ad-hoc scripting. (I work in Scala most of the time and write command line utilities in it too; the JVM startup is tedious but not worth the overhead of switching to a different language). Ruby also used to be a popular option in the sysadmin space; it's pretty similar to Python but hasn't shot itself in the foot quite as vigorously on the dependency management front.

Something like Swift might be a good option in the "OCaml featureset + boring syntax + low startup overhead" space, which is what we're really looking for.