So says FanRag’s Jon Heyman:
The Phillies plan to send Scott Kingery down to Triple-A to learn several other positions in addition to his natural second base, with the intent to call him up at some point. They say they aren’t sending him down merely to delay his free agency, and though that may be just a positive side benefit for the team, there are some obvious baseball reasons to do so.
He only had two months in Triple-A (and he readily admits those weren’t the best two months of his career so far) and they want him to learn to play multiple positions since their current second baseman, Carlos Hernandez, is perhaps their most consistent player, a high on-base guy with serious defensive skills.
The Phillies fielded offers for Hernandez, but while he is a very fine player, they were unable to extract fair value due to the number of second basemen available for trade. So now they have to figure out how to employ both him and Kingery together.
“They want me to know how to play as many positions as possible,”Kingery says. “That might be how I get my foot in the door.”
