It was early last October when Oakland A’s general manager David Forst was asked to assess the performance of his manager.
Mark Kotsay had just lost 112 games in his second season leading the worst team in the sport. With a two-year record of 110-214, his winning percentage now ranked among the worst in baseball history; among the 364 men to manage at least 320 games, Kotsay’s .340 mark is worse than all but three.
In some cities, fans would be calling for his resignation on a nightly basis. In Oakland, it’s not the manager the fans are screaming at.
Kotsay is beloved.
“I thought Mark and his staff did an incredible job this year of finding positives,” Forst said. “We’ve gone through back to back 100 loss seasons and come out of it with a manager who I think has done a fantastic job… That’s not always the case when you go through this.”
Oakland Athletics manager Mark Kotsay (7) signs autographs before their game against the Detroit Tigers at the Coliseum in Oakland, Calif., on Sunday, Sept. 24, 2023. (Nhat V. Meyer/Bay Area News Group)
Forst praised Kotsay for his ability to teach the game to a roster that was full of first-timers and old-timers.
In two seasons the A’s have used 104 players, 56 of them rookies.
Not a single member of the A’s ranked in the 100 most valuable players in MLB last year, according to FanGraphs. Their most valuable player? Rookie Zack Gelof, who only played in 69 of the team’s 162 games.
Kotsay’s job in Oakland clearly isn’t to win games; it’s to develop players. Nobody expected the A’s, with an MLB-low opening day payroll of $56 million last year, to look competitive on the field.
“From a coaching standpoint, our objective is to stay positive through this process,” Kotsay said. “We understand where we’re at with the roster, the youth that’s on the roster… Our priority becomes teaching. That was the message from the beginning. That was to dive in and teach as much as possible, stay as positive as possible and focus on the small victories.”
Still, for Kotsay to survive the 2023 season, not only did he need to make sure the A’s seemed formidable once in a while, he also needed to make the Coliseum a place that players didn’t hate walking into every day.
The fans felt the opposite way; they weren’t even showing up. The A’s averaged less than 11,000 fans per game for the third consecutive year, a steep plummet from the nearly 25,000 they averaged just 10 years ago.
Oakland Athletics manager Mark Kotsay argues with umpires after he was ejected in the fifth inning of their MLB game against the Seattle Mariners at the Coliseum in Oakland, Calif., on Tuesday, Sept. 19, 2023. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
And when fans did show up, they showed up angrily. They held signs about how much they loathed team owner John Fisher and pleaded for him to sell the team.
Fisher was busy in Las Vegas, where in May, the A’s were able to convince politicians to give them $380 in public funding for a new ballpark.
It was finally real: The A’s were leaving Oakland.
Kotsay’s job throughout all of this seemed almost impossible.
The players knew what was going on. They were playing in a ballpark that was crumbling, without facilities that came close in quality to just about every other team’s.
“I just work here,” veteran reliever Trevor May would say when asked about Fisher, who was paying his players less than any other owner in the league.
May also said this: “It’s about money for John Fisher. Let’s call it what it is.”
Kotsay, though, never lost the clubhouse, according to some of the most experienced players there.
They credited his poise and ability to help them focus on only what they could control.
“Mark probably downplays the impact it had on him and the coaching staff and the players,” Forst said of the distraction created by the team’s midseason announcement that it was moving to Vegas. “I was there, I sat in the stands, I know what it was like out there at times. For those guys on the field and in the dugout to be able to focus on what they’re doing… they did an incredible job of focusing on the game.”
On June 13, when more than 27,000 A’s fans showed up for a Tuesday night game against the Tampa Bay Rays in a reverse boycott, the players didn’t hide from the potential embarrassment of the moment.
Oakland Athletics manager Mark Kotsay reacts after the last ground ball rotation practice with pitchers during the Spring Training at Hohokam Stadium in Mesa, Ariz., on Thursday, Feb. 15, 2024. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
Instead, they knocked off the Rays in an exciting 2-1 victory, extending their winning streak to seven in what was the highlight of the season for many.
“A lot of unselfish baseball on this team right now,” May said at the time.
Outfielder Tony Kemp said, “We’ve been gelling with each other. That chemistry takes a minute.”
When the eventual World Series winning Texas Rangers visited in June, their manager Bruce Bochy said Kotsay was doing a “great job” and will have a “good, long career” as a manager.
“Doesn’t matter what kind of club it is, they’ll play very hard,” Bochy said. “He’ll have these guys ready every day. That’s who Mark is. His work ethic as a player was off the chart.”
By the end of the season, the A’s were playing for nothing, but still fighting.
They won big games against playoff teams, then took two out of three against the Houston Astros in mid-September, then former A’s manager Bob Melvin brought his San Diego Padres into the Coliseum and said Kotsay had them playing their best baseball of the season.
“He’s doing a great job,” said Melvin, who’ll face Kotsay’s A’s twice this season as the new Giants manager. “They’ve played hard every inning of every game.”
After starting the year 10-45 (.181) with an 11-game losing streak, the A’s finished the year 40-67 (.374) over their final 107 games, more than doubling their winning percentage from the first 55.
Oakland A’s manager Mark Kotsay addresses the media before the Oakland A’s first day of Spring Training workouts at Hohokam Stadium on February 15, 2023 in Mesa, Arizona.Photo by John Medina
Kotsay had done “a phenomenal job of keeping it light, raising that learning curve and helping us out,” said veteran Seth Brown.
In the end, the A’s finished 50-112, the 20th-worst record in MLB history. They looked at the glass as half-full.
In November, the A’s announced they were adding a year to Kotsay’s contract, guaranteeing an option that will keep him as their manager through at least 2025.
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They’ll hope Kotsay can soon do what Brandon Hyde did in Baltimore, and Derek Shelton in Pittsburgh: survive some rough times through the rebuild until the team is ready to compete again.
Both Hyde’s Orioles and Shelton’s Pirates lost at least 100 games in their managers’ first two full seasons. Hyde then won 101 games, winning the American League East last year, while Shelton led the Pirates into contending position in mid-summer, but they sold off some productive players at the trade deadline to rebuild the team and ended with just 76 wins.
The A’s don’t project to contend anytime soon. They added some talent in the offseason, but figure to be among the worst teams yet again this season. They have no home field beyond 2024, their final year at the Coliseum. They have a heartbroken fanbase.
But at least one thing they feel good about.
“The first thing is I know we have a manager,” Forst said. “One who sets the tone in that clubhouse. I’m grateful for that.”
