9:52am: The A’s announced Kotsay’s extension.
9:42am: The A’s and manager Mark Kotsay have agreed to a three-year contract extension, reports Martin Gallegos of MLB.com. The new contract spans the 2026-28 seasons and gives the A’s a club option over the 2029 campaign. The A’s exercised a 2025 club option on Kotsay back in November, but he was unsigned beyond the current season prior to this new agreement.
Kotsay, 49, has helmed the A’s since 2022 and was the team’s bench coach and quality control coach for the five prior seasons. He also spent four seasons of 17-year major league career in green and gold — including perhaps the best season of his career, in 2004, when he hit .314/.370/.459 as the Athletics’ everyday center fielder.
Though Kotsay’s managerial record is an ugly 179-307, win-loss records rarely tell the full tale of a manager’s success (or lack thereof). That’s all the more true of a rebuilding club. The A’s have made virtually no effort to field a competitive roster throughout Kotsay’s tenure. The focus has been on culling payroll, acquiring/developing young players and, from a bigger picture standpoint, finalizing the relocation process that’s currently landed them in West Sacramento. The idea is to move to Las Vegas for the 2028 season, which would be Kotsay’s final guaranteed year on the current contract.
Expectations for Kotsay will rise during his second contract with the club. The A’s have spent more on the 2025 roster than at any point in recent seasons, due in part to foster interest with a new temporary fanbase in Sacramento but more so due to the threat of having their status as a revenue-sharing recipient revoked for the second time in the past decade. The A’s have signed Luis Severino, Jose Leclerc, Gio Urshela, T.J. McFarland and apparently Luis Urias in free agency, and they swung a trade to bring left-hander Jeffrey Springs over from Tampa Bay as well. Those acquisitions, plus a five-year extension for slugger Brent Rooker, have added $162MM in new long-term money to the team’s books, including more than $45MM for the upcoming 2025 season.
While the Athletics’ roughly $74MM payroll and $106MM luxury-tax number still sit at or near the bottom of the league overall, it’s still a small uptick from recent seasons; from 2022-24, the A’s ran payrolls between $50-65MM and never reached even an $85MM CBT number.
The new additions will join a burgeoning core of interesting young hitters. The late-blooming Rooker is the Athletics’ lineup cornerstone, but outfielders JJ Bleday and Lawrence Butler have blossomed at the plate, while prospects Jacob Wilson, Zack Gelof and Tyler Soderstrom have shown varying flashes of upside at shortstop, second base and first base, respectively. Shea Langeliers doesn’t get on base much, but his 29 homers in 2024 were second among all major league catchers, trailing only division-rival Cal Raleigh (34) up in Seattle. On the pitching side of things, lefty JP Sears looks like a solid innings eater at the very least, while closer Mason Miller has emerged as one of the game’s premier bullpen arms.
The A’s won’t enter the 2025 season as a favorite in the AL West by any stretch of the word, but they’re in a better position that any point since their latest rebuild kicked off — even though the slate of trades shipping out Matt Olson, Matt Chapman, Sean Manaea, Frankie Montas, Chris Bassitt, A.J. Puk, Lou Trivino and others hasn’t actually yielded many of the club’s current core contributors. (Langeliers came over in the Olson swap; Bleday was acquired for Puk.)
For the time being, the focus in West Sacramento will largely be on coaxing further development from Butler, Bleday, Wilson, Gelof, Soderstrom and looming first baseman of the future Nick Kurtz. Before long, however, the A’s will likely be expected to take a legitimate step forward — particularly if payroll continues to rise ahead of the planned move to the Las Vegas Strip. Ownership has clearly determined that Kotsay is the right person to spearhead those efforts and that such continuity will yield similar gains to the ones enjoyed in 2024, when the A’s improved by 19 games over their 2023 record due largely to improvements from players already in house.
Such a good company boy.
Sweet, here comes more completely unnecessary pitching changes.
Nothing is ever his fault…but just curious how the players have any respect for him knowing what this organization is all about.
It’ll be interesting to see how he handles all the new players.
Kotsay just might figure it’s better to be the manager of the A’s than not to be an MLB manager at all.
Exactly and the door isn’t breaking down with people wanting to manage the A’s
He handled interviews well with a tough situation and front office, ownership drama going on. But I dont think he was a good strategic manager. He did interview with mets, houston I believe and never got those jobs
He didnt have anything on the resume…
Hes a fraud. He’s been in the top 10 of manager ejections for each of the last three years. That attitude won’t play in Sacramento and is a bad look for the team
Lifetime player means lifetime of having his ass kissed. I agree. Theyd be better off with a real, actual organizational guy from the minors.
Congratulations on being the first fan to be bothered by a manager standing up for his players. And being from Mars. The rest of us on planet Earth think the umpires deserve to hear it when they get it wrong.
If Ms. Karen was an MLB manager.
The A’s will probably improve this year, and there’s nowhere to go but up, anyway. So Kotsay is in a nice position right now. Nobody expects miracles, and any improvement will make him look good.
Clearly he comes in “at the right price”
Can’t blame the guy for taking the check? Hopefully he does gain more on the job training, cause given the A’s, no way he’s getting canned before the end of the deal.
Bob Geren has entered the chat.
Until the recent contracts to avoid revenue sharing or MLBPA issues, the A’s have been even more cheap since gutting the team after 2021 compared to the previous penny-pinching years.
So, Kotsay is surely safe. And he deserves credit for steering the club through this fiasco.
Not that much credit. He sucks with in game managerial decisions. Great guy tho.
Without a doubt the A’s are lucky to have him.
@cpdpoet Blaming Kotsay is like going up to the local mgr of your Home Depot and shouting “how dare you work here!”
I suppose they figure they’ll bump him to asst. to the gm in a year or two if they want a different guy. They don’t want the A’s to go. 500 and then he takes a different job I guess as well.
As we gloss over the A’s burgeoning roster let us not leave out Miguel Andjuar! I predict a Geronimo Berroa type season from this years most talented DH!