The Oakland A’s face an offseason full of uncertainty, but laid down one foundational brick on Monday.
The A’s have found their next manager from within the organization as Mark Kotsay is set to take over the job after Bob Melvin — the winningest manager in Oakland A’s history — left for the San Diego Padres earlier this offseason.
Kotsay played for the Portland Sea Dogs in 1997.
The organization has not yet announced the hire, which MLB Network’s Jon Heyman first reported. Kotsay was the Oakland third-base coach last year, his seventh on Melvin’s staff. Leaving the Padres’ hitting coach job in 2014, Kotsay joined Melvin’s staff as the bench coach in 2015 and moved to quality control coach in 2017 before taking on third-base coach duties.
Kotsay is an internal hire, which could save some money for a cost-conscious team, but there has been outside interest in him as he has interviewed to manage the Detroit Tigers, Houston Astros and San Francisco Giants in recent years.
The hire is one of few transactions the A’s can make this month as the league’s lockout continues. Teams cannot make any moves involving players after the owners imposed a lockout following the Dec. 1 expiration of the collective bargaining agreement with the players’ association.
The former infielder played 17 seasons in the major leagues with seven teams, including a stint from 2004-07 with the Athletics.
PADRES: New San Diego Padres manager Bob Melvin has rounded out his coaching staff with the addition of Matt Williams, a former All-Star third baseman and Washington Nationals manager, and Bryan Price, former manager of the Cincinnati Reds.
Williams, best known for his 10 seasons with the NL West rival San Francisco Giants, will be third-base coach. Price will be senior adviser to the coaching staff.
MINOR LEAGUES: Four minor league teams that lost their big league affiliations before the 2021 season have filed an antitrust lawsuit against Major League Baseball, using a law firm that has represented players’ unions.
Parent companies of the Staten Island Yankees, Tri-City Valley Cats, Norwich Sea Unicorns and Salem-Keizer Volcanoes filed suit Monday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, accusing the baseball commissioner’s office of violating the Sherman Antitrust Act.
MLB ended the Professional Baseball Agreement that governed the relationship between the majors and minors in late 2020, after minor league seasons were canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic. Affiliates were cut from a minimum of 160 to 120, the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues that had governed the minors since 1901 was shut down and MLB took over operation of the minors.
“The takeover plan is nothing less than a naked, horizontal agreement to cement MLB’s dominance over all professional baseball,” the lawsuit said. “There is no plausible procompetitive justification for this anticompetitive agreement.”
The suit alleged MLB made decisions to retain minor league teams based on whether they were owned by parent clubs or had political ownership, citing Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine’s interest in North Carolina’s Class A Asheville Tourists. MLB said at the time that the changes would cut travel and improve conditions for minor leaguers. The league had no immediate comment Monday.
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