Former Red Sox pitching prospect signs with the Padres after successful 2024 in the KBO
The Padres announced they’ve signed left-handed pitcher Kyle Hart to a one-year deal with a club option for the 2026 season.
Hart will be guaranteed $1.5 million per MassLive’s Chris Cotillo, which comes in the form of a $1 million salary for the 2025 season and a $500k buyout on his $5 million club option for next season. He can see the value of his club option at $7.5 million based on escalators tied to games started.
The former Red Sox pitching prospect had a breakout season in the Korea Baseball Organization last year. The 32-year-old recorded an impressive 2.69 ERA with 182 strikeouts in 157 innings for the NC Dinos.
Hart credits his coaches in Korea for reworking his slider in spring training and helping him add more velocity to his fastball. He averaged 89.1 mph in 2020 and raised his velocity to 91 mph while topping out at 93 or 94 mph at times.
FanGraphs writer Ben Clemens listed Hart as a “potential Erick Fedde bounce-back type” pitcher and predicted he’d land a three-year, $24 million deal. While his contract project was off, the Choi Dong-won winner, the award given to the top starting pitcher in the KBO, becomes the second pitcher the Padres added in the last 24 hours.
San Diego signed another former Red Sox pitcher, Nick Pivetta, to the four-year, $55 million deal, which includes opt-outs after the final two years of the deal.
Hart has some major league experience, pitching for the Red Sox during the 2020 COVID-shortened season, appearing in four games, making three starts, and recording a 15.55 ERA with 13 strikeouts to 10 walks.
Earlier this offseason, Hart spoke to Cotillo and expressed his excitement about the possibility of making it back to the big leagues after a rough go-around five years ago.
“There have been times where I’m embarrassed to even tell people I was in the big leagues because they’re going to Google me and be like, ‘This dip—(expletive) had a (expletive) 16 ERA,’” Hart said to Cotillo. “There’s a piece of me that is pissed off and embarrassed and would love to get a sample size of a couple hundred innings and see what we’re looking at.
“If I have (an ERA of) 15 (again), I’ll go dig a hole and you’ll never hear from me again,” Hart said. “But deep down, I believe I’m a competitive middle-of-the-rotation guy. It’s hard to explain that to people when you have four terrible outings.”
Boston drafted Hart in the 19th round of the 2016 amateur draft out of the University of Indiana as a fifth-year senior. At the time of his promotion to Boston in 2020, Hart was regarded as the No. 42 prospect in the Sox’ farm system, according to SoxProspects.
Hart’s journey to the KBO, and like many before him, having success opened the door to another opportunity to pitch in the bigs in the United States. It’s a low-risk signing for the Padres, who have been looking for more starters to help log innings. With Pivetta and Hart in the fold, they will join Michael King, Yu Darvish, Matt Waldron, Randy Vásquez, and Dylan Cease in the rotation. There has been speculation San Diego will trade Cease due to him becoming a free agent at the end of the 2025 season.
