KC Royals add three players ... including two pitchers ... on minor-league deals

The Kansas City Royals signed a trio of players with experience in the big leagues to minor-league contracts on Tuesday, with spring training a little more than a month away.

The Royals announced the signings of right-handed pitchers Nick Wittgren and Kohl Stewart, as well as infielder/outfielder Matt Beaty.

Wittgren (St. Louis Cardinals) and Beaty (San Diego Padres) each appeared in major-league games last season, while Stewart hasn’t pitched in the majors since July 2021. Stewart pitched for the Chicago Cubs in 2021 until he went on the IL with an elbow injury.

All three figure to go into spring training camp with the goal of competing for roles among a youthful and inexperienced Royals club under first-year manager Matt Quatraro and a largely revamped coaching staff.

Wittgren, a reliever, may be very familiar to followers of the Royals. A former draft pick of the Miami Marlins in 2012, he pitched for the Royals’ division rivals the Cleveland Indians/Guardians from 2019-2021. He’ll be 31 at the start of the season.

From his MLB debut in 2016 through the 2020 season, Wittgren posted a 3.36 ERA in 198 appearances with a 3.46-to-1 strikeout-to-walk ratio, a 1.19 WHIP and 8.8 strikeouts per 9 innings.

In the past two seasons with Cleveland (2021) and St. Louis (2022), he registered an ERA of 5.32 in 44 appearances. His strikeout-to-walk ratio dipped to 2.89-to-1, while his strikeout rate dipped to 7.7 per 9 innings and he posted a WHIP of 1.35.

The Royals drafted Beaty, 29, in the 48th round of the 2011 MLB Draft out of high school in Tennessee. But he instead enrolled at Belmont University. The Los Angeles Dodgers drafted him in the 12th round of the 2015 draft.

The left-handed-hitting Beaty made his debut with the Dodgers in 2019 and slashed .265/.317/.458 in his first 99 games in the majors. He appeared in just 21 games in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season.

In 2021, he played in a career-high 120 games and slashed .270/.363/.402 with seven home runs and 12 total extra-base hits in 234 plate appearances.

Last season with the Padres, he appeared in 20 games and made 47 plate appearances. He went 4 for 43 (.093) at the plate.

In 260 games in the majors over a four-year period, Beaty has slashed .249/.320/.405 with 18 home runs and 92 RBIs in 603 plate appearances. Defensively, he has started games in the outfield (66), first base (45) and third base (seven).

A highly-regarded football recruit as a quarterback out of high school, Stewart signed with the Minnesota Twins after they made him the fourth-overall pick in the 2013 MLB Draft.

Stewart has pitched in just one of the past three MLB seasons. He opted out of the pandemic-shortened season, appeared in four games for the Cubs in 2021 and did not pitch in 2022. He’ll be 28 at the start of the season.

Stewart has pitched just 75 2/3 innings in the majors over the course of three seasons. In 21 total appearances, he has an ERA of 4.88 with a 1.48 WHIP, a 1.41-to-1 strikeout-to-walk ratio and 5.4 strikeouts per 9 innings.

In 2014, he’d been ranked among the top 100 prospects by Baseball America. He remained one of the top prospects in the Twins’ farm system through 2017.

Stewart signed with the Baltimore Orioles as a free agent prior to the 2020 season. After the season, he signed with the Cubs and made six appearances at Triple-A and four appearances in the majors in 2021 prior to the elbow injury.