The Royals announced they have signed infielder Connor Kaiser to a minor league contract. The 28-year-old has spent 14 games in the big leagues with the Rockies and Diamondbacks and is a Kansas City-area native who graduated from Blue Valley West.
Kaiser was originally drafted by the Pirates in the third round of the 2018 draft out of Vanderbilt. He was released in 2022 and spent that season in the Padres organization, battling injuries much of the year. He joined the Rockies the next year and enjoyed his best minor league season in 2023, hitting .238/.353/.404 with nine home runs in 90 games, earning a brief three-game callup with the Rockies. He spent all of 2024 in Triple-A for them, and signed with the Diamondbacks for the 2025 season. He hit .236/.345/.406 with six home runs in 71 games at Triple-A, appearing in 11 games with the big league club, going 2-for-18 (.111). He was outrighted off their 40-man roster earlier this week.
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Kaiser is a right-handed hitter who has battled a lot of injuries in his career – he has never appeared in 100 games in a season. But he was thought well of enough at one time to be a third-round pick, and he has some big league experience. He will likely help fill out the roster at Omaha, but he’s a local kid to root for, and maybe he can join other local guys like Noah Cameron, Carter Jensen, and Ben Kudrna on the Royals roster one day.