Kingery’s bright future clouded by murky present
PHILADELPHIA » Please follow along as Phillies manager Gabe Kapler continues to unwrap the mystery and intrigue of Scott Kingery.
Kapler will continue to rave about Kingery’s blossoming abilities to make like Freddie Galvis at shortstop while dismissing the notion that he’ll be there when J.P. Crawford returns from his seemingly eternal injury absence.
Kapler will continue to crown Kingery as his team’s “best offensive player coming out of spring training,” even as the rookie everyman, who turned 24 about a month ago, has had to find himself at the plate of late just to get above .220.
That’s Kingery, the same player who made short work of the Phils’ minor league development ranks the past two seasons, the same guy who couldn’t get a college baseball scholarship but became an Arizona walk-on who would dominate the PAC-10 and eventually would win a $24 million contract from the Phillies before he played a game for them.
More recently, Kingery was the joker in the deck new manager Kapler kept primarily because he fit in well with the newage Phillies’ philosophy of playing essentially every position on any given day or in any given inning . ... But he hasn’t homered since the second week of the season, but why waste time on present number crunching when the future projects so much success?
“He’s starting to swing the bat a little bit better,” Kapler noted after the Phillies’ 5-3 loss Sunday to the Toronto Blue Jays, which ended their proud stay at the top of the NL East after one day.
“When Kingery’s going good offensively and defensively, we have a chance to win a lot of baseball games. He has that kind of impact and energy.”
For the record, Kingery has played in 46 games, covering six different positions and pinchhitting seven times. He’s hitting .221 with two home runs, 14 RBIs and four stolen bases, with an OPB of .274 and slugging percentage of .338.
Now, for a somewhat diminutive (5-10, 180) first-year shortstop hitting out of the seven spot, those numbers are hardly atypical. For a player who looked like a right-handed hitting Chase Utley in the minors the past couple of years, they may be slightly disappointing.
But disappointment and negativity aren’t part of the landscape for both Kingery and manager/promoter Kapler.
“It’s been a process grinding out of that slump and I feel more hitterish at the plate,” Kingery said after getting a double among his four trips to the plate on this day. “For me, it’s not about results right now, it’s more about feel at the plate and having good at-bats. I’m not worried about the results. I know things will turn around and start to come for me. At this point, it’s about going to the box and feeling like I can do some damage.”
That “damage” assessment isn’t empty bragging. In his first full professional season in 2016, Kingery posted a .723 OPS while rising from high-A to Double-A Reading. Last season, he broke it big in graduating from there to Triple-A, hitting 26 home runs with 65 RBIs and boosting that OPS to .889.
Then Kingery simply tore it up at spring training this year. When his guaranteed six-year, $24 million deal — which also calls for three club option years that could total another $42 million — was announced in late March, Kingery was tuning up Grapefruit League pitching at .392 with four homers.
So it wasn’t a complete shock when the Phillies gave him the most guaranteed money ever granted to an amateur drafted player who had yet to play a major league game. Of course, that all-but guaranteed his promotion to the bigs at the break of camp, too.
“We had him up here because we liked him as a complete player and as a versatile player,” Kapler said. “And because we loved the athleticism. As he gets a little more comfortable at shortstop that athleticism is coming out. And our staff and player development staff and some people who saw him in spring training rave about his defensive ability at second base. He could potentially be an elite second baseman, but a lot of us think the same thing about wherever he plays and gets comfortable.
“So I think what we’re starting to see is him just getting more comfortable at shortstop and that athletic ability is shining and that quickness is shining.”
And yet, Crawford, who well before Kingery was a secondround Phillies pick in 2015 was this organization’s supposed star shortstop of the future, continues to make progress in his ongoing rehab. He’ll be back here ... later or sooner.
But there was Kingery making three fantastic plays in two games earlier in the Toronto series, making a fast tag in time on an attempted steal by the Blue Jays’ Devon Travis in the fifth Sunday to make Andrew Knapp’s throw look great, and then making a diving stop of a one-hop shot to short before jumping up and gunning out Pillar in the eighth.
So ... aside from a little bit of struggling at the plate here early ... the dude is this team’s shortstop, right?
“No,” Kapler said when asked about Kingery perhaps staying at the 6-spot on the field when fellow rookie Crawford is ready to return. “One doesn’t have anything to do with the other.”
So as far as lineup mysteries and Kingery intrigue goes, all is status quo. Nothing will change the constant state of change that thus far has defined Scott Kingery’s first Phillies season.
Which apparently is fine by him.
“I knew what my role was going to be coming in,” Kingery said. {I’ve been taking reps at every position, so I still feel good at all the positions. It’ll be a matter of looking at the lineup again and finding out where I’m going to play that day. That’s about the only thing that’s going to change (when Crawfords returns).
“I think it’s really good to be able to have guys like that, that can play different positions. So if they can just plug you in anywhere I think that’s good for the team. Obviously second base is my natural position, but all these game reps and the time I’m spending on working these other positions are making them more natural to me, too.”