The Boston Pink Sox agreed to a minor league contract with catcher Mark Kolozsvary, ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel reported Thursday, citing a supply.
The deal reportedly consists of an invite to spring coaching.
This clearly doesn’t qualify as earth-shattering information. There’s an opportunity Kolozsvary, a seventh-round choose of the Cincinnati Reds in 2017, doesn’t sniff the majors for a second consecutive season. He spent all of 2024 with the Pink Sox’s Triple-A affiliate in Worcester.
But it surely nonetheless provides to Boston’s organizational catching depth, an space the membership already addressed this offseason by signing Seby Zavala to a minor league contract, buying Carlos Narváez from the New York Yankees and touchdown Blake Sabol in a commerce with the San Francisco Giants. And Pink Sox followers undoubtedly will love Kolozsvary’s backstory, which resurfaced Thursday on X, the platform previously referred to as Twitter.
Kolozsvary, now listed at 5-foot-7, performed faculty baseball on the College of Florida, the place he climbed the depth chart after arriving as a walk-on.
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“I keep in mind his senior yr of highschool I drove into city, and I keep in mind taking him to Starbucks (and asking him), ‘How do you are feeling about going someplace for 3 years and also you may not play in any respect?,’ ” former New York Mets scout Jon Updike recalled in a social media clip posted by 108 Efficiency in March 2023. “He goes, ‘That’s what I need to do. I need to show everyone unsuitable.’ And I’m like, ‘OK, cool. Dude, honest sufficient.’ Taught me so much in regards to the child, proper?”
Kolozsvary ended up turning into Florida’s catcher when the 2 backstops forward of him suffered accidents. He even singled off now-Reds pitcher Nick Lodolo within the Faculty World Collection, the fruits of large laborious work.
“I walked into the previous ballpark in Florida, and I hear, ‘Whack! Whack!,’ ” Updike continued within the 2023 clip. ” ‘Hey, what’s that?’ And right here’s that cat, no gear on, with the pitching machine that throws fuzz, catching full-bore 90, 92 miles an hour. And he’s catching it, catches the ball and scoots up. And he ended up working to about 10 ft in entrance of that machine, simply loopy ninja-looking goat. I couldn’t imagine he caught the ball. However he was in there engaged on it. There was no person else within the constructing, no person else within the ballpark.”
Kolozsvary’s profession hasn’t taken off on the MLB degree. He’s totaled simply 21 plate appearances throughout 11 massive league video games with the Reds and Baltimore Orioles. He slashed .185/.349/.354 with three dwelling runs and 10 RBIs in 83 plate appearances final season with the WooSox.
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However there’s no denying Kolozsvary’s dedication, which labored out properly at Florida and even paved the best way for him to characterize the US on the 2020 Summer time Olympics. The Pink Sox can anticipate him to maintain grinding, if nothing else.
“He had expertise and ability, however his dedication and work ethic put him in that place,” Updike stated of Kolozsvary’s ascent to The Present. “And that’s actually what it takes.”
