Питчер Кайл Харт стал невидимым героем «Пэдрос» после перелома карьеры в Южной Корее

Kyle Hart was going to retire from Major League Baseball before a stint in the Korean Baseball Organization in 2024. It’s a good thing he didn’t, because the Padres have sure needed him this year. The 33-year-old Hart has been an unsung hero of the Padres bullpen, particularly as they employed “pitching chaos” in the week leading up to the trade deadline. The strategy worked. The Padres went 5-2 in that span. Key to that success was Hart, a versatile left-hander who has provided multiple innings as an opener and middle-to-late-inning reliever. Heading into Saturday, Hart had a 2.29 ERA over his last 19⅔ innings, with six appearances of at least two innings and one three-inning start. Hart’s emergence in his second season with the Padres is the product of a mechanical adjustment he made last year and renewed confidence that came after a former big-league reliever delivered some tough love. It was Craig Stammen who helped pull Hart out of what the pitcher called a “dark place.” Hart made six starts for the Padres last year before being optioned to the minor leagues. He was brought back up, used out of the bullpen, then optioned again a few weeks later. The back-and-forth left him confused. “I was physically and mentally fine. Just wasn’t really sure of the direction that I needed to go,” Hart said. Stammen, an assistant to the major league coaching staff and baseball operations department in 2025, formed a relationship with Hart while he was in Triple-A. The two golfed together and spent time talking about baseball and life. Hart said Stammen helped him regain his confidence. “I had a couple really bad games — PCL-type, giving up seven, eight runs,” Hart said. “I had never really been in that league before and I was like, ‘This is it. I’m never gonna go back up.’” Stammen had lived through similar stretches during his own pitching career, which spanned 13 big-league seasons — the last six with the Padres. “The biggest thing he helped me with was not, like, a certain pitch or anything. It was overall competitiveness,” Hart said. “There were times down there where you give up four or five runs. You just want to give up. And I think he could sense that, and he just didn’t let me.” Stammen put it this way: “I just wanted to show him that I was in his corner and that I believed in him, and that if I had something to give to him, that it was coming from a good place. Sometimes when (a player) goes down to Triple-A, he’s like, ‘I’m not good enough.’ And really, it’s not that you’re not good. You’re good enough to be in the big leagues — just not right now. You’ll eventually be there, and you were there previously. So it’s like a mental shift of where you’re at in that current space and how you can use it to your advantage.” Hart did exactly that, using the time to focus on things in his control — including a specific directive from the organization. A report from the Point Loma Nazarene University biomechanics lab during 2025 spring training alerted the Padres’ coaching staff to a mechanical change that could improve Hart’s execution. “I wasn’t using my big back muscles for either strength or flexibility,” Hart said. “It’s a lower half engagement of creating tension, so that he can really get into his scapula and the shoulder area to really lock it in to return it home,” Padres pitching coach Ruben Niebla explained. “He was a little bit more loose … So just tightening the rubber band to be able to load.” The Padres gave Hart the information as early as they could, but translating it into results proved difficult. “Thousands of pitches” and four months later, Hart said, the adjustment finally took hold. His fastball velocity jumped from the low 90s to between 93 and 95 mph. “I think that’s what makes baseball great is you do well, then you hit a speed bump,” Hart said. “You go back to work and you’re fighting to do well again. And it just seems like that’s kind of the epitome of my baseball career is to climb, climb, climb, get knocked back, then keep climbing.” Hart’s path to this point has hardly been straightforward. He posted a 15.55 ERA in 11 innings with the Red Sox in 2020, his only previous major league experience after being drafted by Boston in 2016. His debut came during the COVID pandemic and was complicated by a bout of Lyme disease. More years in the minors with different organizations followed. Hart seriously contemplated retirement. Instead, he chose to continue his career in South Korea, largely to provide for his family. Pitching for the NC Dinos, Hart led the KBO with 182 strikeouts and finished second in both wins (13) and ERA (2.69) across 26 starts. He received the Choi Dong-won Award, the KBO equivalent of MLB’s Cy Young Award. He signed with the Padres the following offseason. After all that, and with the Padres using him in a variety of situations, Hart isn’t interested in overthinking his role. “Let’s just win games,” Hart said. “I’m too old for any of this other crap. I just want to win.”