Padres Re-Sign Kyle Hart

The Padres announced they’ve re-signed Kyle Hart to a one-year deal with a club option for the 2027 season. The Nello Gamberdino client is reportedly guaranteed $1.2MM. He’ll be paid $1MM in 2026 and is guaranteed a $200K buyout on the $2.5MM option. The option price would climb by $250K apiece if Hart reaches 16 and 20 starts next season; it’d jump another $500K at 24, 28 and 32 starts. The buyout price would climb by $100K each at 50, 55 and 60 appearances.

Hart, 33 next week, posted a 5.86 ERA in 43 innings of work for the Padres this past year while splitting time between the rotation and bullpen. The lefty inked a $1.5MM guarantee with San Diego back in February that came with a $5MM club option for the 2026 season that Padres opted to decline earlier this month. That wasn’t necessarily a shock given his lackluster performance; even during his time at Triple-A El Paso, Hart posted a middling 4.10 ERA in 63 2/3 innings of work with a strikeout rate of just 18.5%. 2025 marked his first work in the majors since his 2020 big league debut with the Red Sox, which lasted all of 11 innings.

During the interim, Hart had bounced between various minor league affiliates before heading overseas to pitch for the KBO’s NC Dinos. He made 26 starts for the Dinos in 2024 and pitched exceptionally, with a 2.69 ERA and a 28.8% strikeout rate across 157 innings of work. It was a strong enough season that Hart looked to return to the big leagues and see what he could do at the highest level, but things didn’t work out quite so well last year. Hart is hardly the first player to dominate overseas but struggle to replicate his production stateside, as even 2023 KBO MVP Erick Fedde struggled in the big leagues this past year after enjoying a strong return season with the White Sox and Cardinals in 2024.

Regardless of Hart’s struggles last year, however, it’s understandable that San Diego decided to re-up with the lefty for 2026. The Padres are a team in desperate need of volume when it comes to rotation-capable arms. Dylan Cease and Michael King have both departed the organization for free agency and, while Joe Musgrove is expected back next year from injury, it’s already known that Yu Darvish won’t pitch next year. Musgrove and Nick Pivetta are both quality veterans, but Randy Vasquez, JP Sears, and Matt Waldron are all questionable as quality regulars in a contending rotation. That’s true of Hart as well, of course, but having additional depth behind that group figures to be valuable in order to avoid a situation like the one San Diego faced in 2021 when a lack of pitching depth forced them to turn to displaced veterans like Jake Arrieta and Vince Velasquez as they narrowly missed the playoffs due to a late September collapse.

Signing Hart helps fill out the depth on a budget, but it won’t do much to solve the problem of San Diego needing additional impact in the rotation. The Padres have operated with some financial uncertainty in the years since Peter Seidler’s death, and the recent announcement that ownership intends to explore a sale of the franchise further clouds the club’s financial picture in the short-term. That’s not to say making a splash in free agency and adding a mid-rotation or better arm to the mix is completely out of the question; they did manage to find room in the budget to add Pivetta just last year, after all. That could lead to a creative solution like trying Mason Miller or Adrian Morejon in the rotation as the team’s best option if they hope to add an impact starter with a pursuit of someone at the top of the market like Cease or Framber Valdez seemingly unlikely.

Robert Murray of FanSided first reported the guarantee, option price/buyout, and maximum value of the escalators. The Associated Press had the specific escalator breakdown. Image courtesy of Patrick Gorski, Imagn Images.