And so the Josh Byrnes era begins... already he is showing the baseball world that he isn't a procrastinator like his predecessor Jed Hoyer, who waited until the last week before Spring Training to start filling his roster. The game is afoot!
Ken Rosenthal reports that the Padres have signed Mark Kotsay to a $1.25 million one year deal, pending a physical.
A few months ago I heard a radio interview where he said he was considering retirement, but no longer. He must have heard that there is a baseball club in San Diego that allows you to ease into retirement, like you would the cool waters of the Pacific. The Padres probably think they can squeeze a little bit of veteran leadership and hustle out of him, maybe even bring him off the bench to face some right handed pitching in a pinch.
@FollowThePadres
Follow The Padres#Padres dreadful vs. RHP (.229/.301/.340) to add a career .280 hitter vs. RHP for bench job for $1.25m. Please tell me why it's a bad deal.
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Hoyer's attempts at signing fan favorites and veteran leadership didn't pan out last year in the form of Orlando Hudson, Brad Hawpe and Jason Bartlett, so Byrnes knew he had to act quickly to grab likeable former Padres before Kevin Towers could.
It's hard to believe that it was 10 years ago when the Padres first signed Kotsay. So much has changed. The Padres no longer play in Qualcomm Stadium, the 3 Doors Down Kryptonite song fell off the charts.... and that's about it. Everything else is about the same, even the uniforms look like they did in 2001.
Personally I've always liked Mark Kotsay. Of course I haven't really seen him play in 8 years, but if I concentrate hard enough I feel like I can almost remember him chasing down line drives in the gaps and swinging ferociously for the fences. Maybe he can do that sort of thing again if he concentrates hard enough.
He signed my glove back in 2003 when we had some front row seats along the first base line, which is weird since it was probably the only time I've brought a glove to a game. Even stranger is that he signed it in a ball point pen and yet his autograph is still there, clear as day, even after years of use and repetitive oiling. I have my own name written in permanent marker for identification purposes and I've had to re-ink it multiple times since then. It's a strange phenomenon. It's like the story of how Saint Didacus's body remained incorrupt and smelled fragrant long after his death, only with a ball point pen signature and without the fragrant scent.
Anyway, I can already tell that Twitter is going to hate this move, but if it's between Kotsay and Geoff Blum I don't mind giving Kotsay a try again.
Mark Kotsay
#0 / Right Field / San Diego Padres
6-0
210
Least favorite mammal
L
Dec 02, 1975
Married: Jamie Kotsay