San Diego Padres bring Kyle Hart back on 1-yr deal with '27 option

With MLB free agency open, the San Diego Padres could be announcing signings any minute. They announced one already this morning...

32-year old Kyle Hart (who will be 33 before the season begins) signed a 1-year deal for $1.5 million last season, making the jump from the KBO to MLB in the process. He had a $5 million option for the 2026 season that the team has already declined, so this new deal will likely be less than that.

Five years after he made his MLB debut with the Red Sox, Hart pitched in 20 games for the 2025 Padres (6 starts, 14 relief appearances) and posted his second negative bWAR MLB season.

Hart finished with an ERA+ of 73 (100 is average) and a FIP of 5.18 (that's what his ERA would've been with standard defense behind him). Or, to be more succinct about it, Kyle Hart did not appear to be any more of an MLB-caliber pitcher in 2025 than he was in 2020. At least not if you look at the entire season.

That's not to say that there's nothing to work with here. Hart was a better reliever (.150 batting average against) than he was a starter, and it took a little while for the Padres to figure that out. He was also much better against left-handed batters (.529 OPS against) than he was against right-handed batters (.847 OPS against).

The short answer to why the Padres decided to bring back Kyle Hart is that they have a ton of innings to eat and not enough arms to eat them after losing Yu Darvish to injury and like losing Michael King and Dylan Cease to free agency. If you're worried about Kyle Hart taking one of those spots, he can work out of the bullpen effectively.

Hart also transitioned his slider, which has always been a pretty ineffective pitch, into more of a sweeper during the season and saw great returns with it (.132 batting average against the pitch, which he threw more than any other pitch this season). Here's just a peek into how that pitch changed over the course of 2025:

Putting numbers to that picture: His four-seamer went from 90.8 mph as a starter to 93 as a reliever, and while that’s hardly “elite,” it’s a lot more acceptable, especially for someone without elite four-seam movement. But, as important: Hart has added a ton of extra movement on his sweeper, which had 8 inches of horizontal break in May and now has 17 inches of break in September. He’s thrown it 41 times this month. He’s yet to allow a hit on it.

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All of this is to say that the Kyle Hart you saw in early 2025 might not be the same Kyle Hart that enters the 2026 season. Maybe that leads to a breakout Spring Training where he grabs a hold of one of the team's empty starting rotation slots, or takes over an important role in the bullpen after Mason Miller and/or Adrian Morejon and/or Jeremiah Estrada move into the rotation, maybe not. A.J. Preller and the Padres felt comfortable paying to find out, knowing that he still has pretty good value in other roles if Plan A doesn't work out.