Every winter, as Major League Baseball teams quietly stockpile depth in the shadows of bigger offseason headlines, a familiar pattern unfolds: clubs take low-risk fliers on fringy veterans who might, just might, still have something left. Some of these signings never move the needle. Others unexpectedly morph into valuable bench pieces or even catalysts for postseason teams. The Chicago Cubs, looking to fortify the edges of their 2025 roster, made one such move by signing Scott Kingery to a minor-league contract with a spring training invitation. On paper, it is a small transaction. But for Kingery himself, it could represent the final—or possibly the first real—turning point of a career that has never quite aligned with the promise that once surrounded it.
Kingery’s story is one of early expectations, surprising riches, organizational shuffling, flashes of potential, and frustration at nearly every step. To understand why his signing still sparks interest, even now at age 31, you need to go back to 2018, when the Philadelphia Phillies believed they had struck gold. As he came out of spring training, the club made a bold move: they signed the then-rookie to a six-year, $24 million contract before he ever played a major league game. It was a deal built on confidence that Kingery — a dynamic, athletic second baseman with pop, speed, and versatility — would quickly cement himself as a franchise cornerstone.
This wasn’t blind optimism. At the time, Kingery ranked No. 2 in the Phillies’ farm system and a lofty No. 34 on MLB Pipeline’s Top 100, ahead of eventual All-Star pitchers Corbin Burnes, Max Fried, and Brandon Woodruff. That detail, revisited six years later, says as much about baseball’s developmental unpredictability as it does about Kingery’s stalled career. Prospects rise and fall for countless reasons. Some reasons are invisible from the outside. Some are predictable only in hindsight.
Kingery, for his part, showed flashes early but never sustained them. After his debut in 2018, he posted occasional power bursts, highlight-reel defensive plays, and stretches of encouraging production. But inconsistency defined his Phillies tenure. Strikeouts mounted. Injuries arrived. The organization moved him all over the diamond, hoping versatility would unlock a clearer path to playing time. Instead, it often seemed to blur his development further.
By the time he was outrighted multiple times, his once-secure long-term contract had become a footnote — a reminder of what might have been, and a source of criticism from those who saw the deal as premature. Meanwhile, Kingery slipped off the major league radar. Before 2024, the Phillies finally moved on, trading him to the Los Angeles Angels for cash considerations.
If Kingery was looking for a reset button, Anaheim did not provide one. His 2024 season with the Angels organization was among the most turbulent of his career. Though he arrived hoping to build on a strong 2023 Triple-A campaign with Lehigh Valley — where he hit 25 home runs and posted an .804 OPS in 125 games — the year quickly unraveled. Kingery was designated for assignment three separate times, a process that often signals a player’s fading viability on a big-league roster. When he did get a chance with the Angels, he recorded only four hits in 29 plate appearances, hardly enough to resurrect his big-league standing.
But Kingery’s most enduring attribute — and the one that continues to attract teams like the Cubs — is his positional versatility. He can play second base, third, shortstop, and all three outfield positions. In today’s roster construction landscape, where flexibility is currency and benches are increasingly specialized, that sort of utility profile always has value.
And for the Cubs, it’s not just theoretical value. Their 2024 postseason roster included a super-utility player, Willi Castro, who is now a free agent. The Cubs’ core lineup is deep, but depth can never be taken for granted across a 162-game season. A player who can competently cover half a dozen positions is a safety net every contending club wants at Triple-A and, ideally, at the MLB level.
Make no mistake: Kingery is not walking into Mesa as a favorite to win a job. His career WAR sits at –0.2, a reminder that his cumulative contributions at the major league level have been neutral at best, detrimental at worst. The Cubs are giving him a chance, not a role. They have younger players, internal options, and more reliable roster pieces ahead of him. But spring training is not about roster hierarchy — not entirely, anyway. It is about competition, matchups, injuries, and surprises. Every year, players emerge from relative obscurity to force the issue.
And yes, sometimes they’re utility players.
Another layer to Kingery’s situation is financial. With the millions he earned early in his career, he has made considerably more than the typical player who sits near zero career WAR. That can be a blessing. It can also create pressure. When a player signs a long-term deal, expectations for performance follow him relentlessly. Kingery’s career arc is often discussed not in terms of what he is, but what he was projected to be. Now, for the first time, he is signing a true free-agent contract, without the shadow of that extension or the baggage of being “the guy the Phillies bet on too early.” In a strange way, this minor-league deal is the cleanest slate he has ever had as a professional.
For the Cubs, the stakes are modest. For Kingery, they may be existential. At 31, opportunities like this don’t come often. The depth chart always gets younger. The next utility man always arrives. The next wave of prospects always pushes harder. But baseball has a long history of late bloomers — or perhaps more accurately, players who needed a second or third or fourth chance in the right environment to unlock something new.
Kingery’s swing has pop. His legs still offer speed. His glove is playable at many spots. At Triple-A in 2023, he showed that there is still something in the bat, at least at that level. If the Cubs can coax out even a fraction of what scouts once believed he could be, Kingery could become more than a name filling a minor-league transaction log.
But even if he doesn’t, the signing reflects one of the things that makes baseball — and especially the offseason — so compelling: the constant churn of possibility. Every spring, a few players redefine themselves. Every year, one or two unexpected stories rise from the minor-league pile. And somewhere, a player like Scott Kingery walks into camp believing, maybe for the last time, that his baseball story isn’t finished.
For now, the Cubs have offered him that chance. What he does with it will determine the next chapter.
