{"id":541902,"date":"2026-01-28T06:26:17","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T06:26:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/541902\/"},"modified":"2026-01-28T06:26:17","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T06:26:17","slug":"mets-sign-grandson-of-long-time-cubs-all-star-infielder-to-free-agent-contract-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/541902\/","title":{"rendered":"Mets sign grandson of long-time Cubs All-Star infielder to free agent contract"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mets sign grandson of long-time Cubs All-Star infielder to free agent contract<\/a> originally appeared on The Sporting News<\/a>. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The New York Mets<\/a> made a relatively small free agent signing on Tuesday night, but it has cool ties through baseball history.<\/p>\n

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The new Mets player, according to Mike Puma of the New York Post<\/a>, is Grae Kessinger. They’ve signed him to a minor league contract with an invite to spring training.<\/p>\n

Kessinger is the grandson of Don Kessinger, who played 12 seasons for the Chicago Cubs<\/a> in which he made six All-Star teams and won two Gold Glove awards.<\/p>\n

Grae has played in just 48 MLB games. Those were split between 2023 and 2024 with the Houston Astros<\/a>. He batted .131 (8-for-61).<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0Bo Bichette comments exhibit clear hyprocrisy<\/a><\/p>\n

He’s originally a second-round pick in the 2019 MLB Draft out of Ole Miss, taken by the Astros. He’s a native of Oxford, Mississippi.<\/p>\n

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After making it to the majors in 2023 and 2024 with Houston, he left the organization and signed with the Diamondbacks for 2025.<\/p>\n

Kessinger only played in Triple-A Reno in 2025, just for 11 games in a limited campaign for him. He batted .235 in the light action.<\/p>\n

Now, Kessinger joins his third organization, hoping to put together a fuller season and potentially prove to the Mets that he deserves a shot back in the big leagues at some point.<\/p>\n

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New York has two unusual infielders slated to start the year, Bo Bichette at third base and Jorge Polanco at first base. Those are new positions for both of them.<\/p>\n

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Adding some infield depth to likely open the season at Triple-A Syracuse probably isn’t the worst idea, just in case things go particularly awry.<\/p>\n

For now, though, he’ll try to continue to hone his strong baseball genes to get himself another shot in the majors.<\/p>\n

More MLB news:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mets sign grandson of long-time Cubs All-Star infielder to free agent contract originally appeared on The Sporting News.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":541903,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2396],"tags":[5,88,24,37749,51166,54,120,101,25116,20755,4,1690,61,10147,2548,4203,2245],"class_list":["post-541902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-mets","tag-baseball","tag-bo-bichette","tag-chicago-cubs","tag-don-kessinger","tag-grae-kessinger","tag-houston-astros","tag-jorge-polanco","tag-mets","tag-mike-puma","tag-minor-league-contract","tag-mlb","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-mets","tag-new-york-post","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkmets","tag-the-diamondbacks"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115971305190395185","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=541902"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541902\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/541903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=541902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=541902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=541902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}