The San Diego Padres announced on Monday that retired former Pads outfielder Mark Kotsay will head back to the dugout, and serve as the team’s hitting coach, after the team dismissed former hitting coach Phil Plantier back in October.
Kotsay retired from baseball in 2013 as a member of the Padres, and had two different stints with the team in his 17-year big league career (2001-03, 2012-13). He spent last year with the Padres as well, serving as a special assistant to the general manager.
“The past year was a great learning experience for me,” Kotsay said. “I got my feet wet on the scouting side, player development. But at the end of the year, my calling and my passion lay in the uniform.”
This will be San Diego’s seventh hitting coach since the Padres moved into spacious Petco Park in 2004, and Kotsay will have to find a way to turn around an offense that ranked last in nearly every meaningful offensive category.
“I’m not really concerned about job security, I look at this as an opportunity to get back into the game that I love and to help lead this group of hitters,” Kotsay said.
This will be Kotsay’s first stint as a hitting coach, and first stint as a professional coach in Major League Baseball, but he is aware of how tough being a hitting coach can be.
“In the 17 years I played, I had 12 different hitting coaches,” Kotsay said. “I’m aware it’s a difficult task. It’s a role that in some regards is not necessarily rewarding,”
Kotsay will get the unique opportunity to coach some of the members of the team that he had recently played with, and has a simple message for those players.
“Use (Petco Park) for the way it is,” Kotsay said. “There’s a lot of open space out there in the outfield and you will reward yourself when you take a positive at-bat. In the long run it’s about scoring runs.”
