He may not be suffering from COVID per se, but it obviously took a lot ouf of him - he said so himself - and is behind on his conditioning.
Kingery checked out fine (for heart problems), but he has reported occasional shortness of breath since he reported to camp July 11. Asked this week if thereâs reason to believe Kingery has lingering effects from the virus, general manager Matt Klentak said, âWe donât know. Thereâs not a lot of data and history of professional athletes coming back from COVID -- and particularly like Scott, who had a pretty serious case.â
"Energy level is something that affected me when I had COVID and it's still, I don't think, back to completely normal," Kingery said. "Shortness of breath is getting better day by day. It's still not back to 100 percent, but it's close. We've been kind of throwing back and forth the idea of whether these injuries were from COVID or if it was from overworking too fast."
Sems to me shortness of breath is enough reason to pack him off to Allentown.
Even as little as we know, I think it's like most injuries - however long you are out, it takes you the same amount of time to start getting yourself back to a baseline level of baseball readiness. Cutch is basically having the same issue. People thought it was good luck that the cancelled season meant he wouldn't miss any games but having 2 months instead of 5 means he might not be good all season.
Kingery might be bad - maybe he's ultimately no better than Maikel Franco with better defense and will be a bust - but he's certainly not .279 OPS bad. And if there's nothing wrong with him and the team is going nowhere he needs to play through it, because between his contract and the team's future SS/2B/CF situation, they either need him or need to know they need someone else.
