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Watching Atlanta sign all their early career players and then seeing the Phillies with the NL Pennant brought a name to mind that some of you might not even remember.
Scott Kingery rode a 2nd round draft pick status (2015 U - Arizona) and a good 2017 AA/AAA season to see Top-30-ish prospect rankings in the winter of 2017/18
Slated to be the opening day SS, the Phils were confident enough in his future to sign him to a nine year deal worth as much as $56 million a week prior to his first ever
ML AB. And while a 605 OPS for the 24 y/o in his rookie year was surely disappointing, he did follow it with 788 in 2019 (101 OPS+) and 57 XBHs over 500 PA so things
weren't looking too bad.
And then he cratered. In 36 games during the Covid 2020 season Kingery hit .159 (OPS+ = 37) and has had 19 ML ABs since with just one hit.
His minor league season in '22 was a little kinder, but .230/.348/.370 for a 28 y/o in AAA isn't getting him any closer to being back in the big leagues. He appeared in
one game for the Phils this past year, as a 9th inning double switch on defense.
On the plus side for the Phils, Kingery will never see most of that money as the deal is back-loaded and tied up in options. 2023 is his final guaranteed year ($8.25 mil)
following salaries of $1, $1.5, $1.75, $4.25, and $6.25 for '18 thru '22. After that it's a $1 mil buyout vs options of $13, $14, & $15 for '24-'26 and I think we know
which was the Phils are going to go with that choice staring them in the face.
I don't know specifically what happened to him as he dropped off the radar so quickly that, although I could remember the existence of him and the deal, I had to
look it all up just to remember his name and find out whether he was even still playing. Injuries? Attitude? Ceiling? Some combo of all of them? I dunno.
I don't really have a point here as there's no one on the current Mets that seems to fall into this same category, nor has any version of their front office shown
a tendency to go this route although maybe we'll see one in the future (Alvarez?). The lesson, of course, is that if you're going to take those kinds of chances on
young players you've got to pick the right ones. The Braves at least waited until Michael Harris had shown something at the ML level before going all in but even
there it was only about two months and he's three years younger than Kingery was when the Phils pulled the trigger on him so this year's success brings no
assurance that it'll all be smooth sailing from here on out.
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