Boos changed to ‘Kooz’ for ex-Scrappers’ player

Despite a bad start, Kevin Kouzmanoff managed to stay with the Padres.

PEORIA, Ariz. (AP) — Even with a full big league season behind him, former Mahoning Valley Scrapper Kevin Kouzmanoff still has to deal with a certain misconception.

He’s not the Crushin’ Russian, even if it is a fun nickname for fans to say.

No, he’s of Macedonian descent, and that’s apparently a big deal to the Balkan country.

“I don’t know who came up with that,” the Padres infielder said, “ but I hear it a lot. I guess the Macedonian Tribune took offense to it.”

It’s always good to know who’s got your back.

The San Diego Padres certainly did last year. When Kouzmanoff’s batting average dipped all the way to .108 on May 7, it seemed like the rookie was just another out away from being on the next plane to Triple-A Portland.

Kouzmanoff avoided a demotion, eventually got his average on the right side of the Mendoza Line and became a fan favorite. When he comes to the plate or makes a nice play at third base, he’s greeted by chants of, “KOOOOZ!”

“I think at the beginning of the season they were boos, but then they started to turn to ’Kooz,’ ” Kouzmanoff said recently at spring training.

Kouzmanoff is in China, where the Padres will play the Los Angeles Dodgers twice this weekend in Beijing, the first two Major League Baseball games in the country.

Kouzmanoff faced a lot of expectations when the 2007 season started. He’d come over from Cleveland in an offseason trade for popular second baseman Josh Barfield. Plus, the previous September, shortly after his callup with the Indians, Kouzmanoff became the first player to hit a grand slam on the first pitch he faced in the big leagues.

With the Padres, though, his batting average started out low and got lower.

“It was in my mind,” Kouzmanoff said. “It was the trade for Josh Barfield, a great ballplayer and a great kid. I played with him in the past. There were some huge shoes to be filled there, so there was some added pressure.

“It was terrible,” he added. “I’d never gone through anything like that in my career. It was the first time dealing with something like that. But fortunately, I was in a good clubhouse where everybody supported me, everyone kept telling to keep pushing, keep going, don’t give up.”

Among the supporters was general manager Kevin Towers, who’d swung the deal for Kouzmanoff after a yearlong search for a dependable third baseman.

“K.T. came to me and said, ‘You’re our guy. We want you to play here. Just keep battling through it,’ “ Kouzmanoff said. “Maybe there was a chance of me going back down to Triple-A. I don’t know.”

Ultimately, it was Kouzmanoff’s demeanor and presence that kept him from being sent down.

“I wouldn’t say that it wasn’t discussed,” Towers said. “But he was playing great defense and he didn’t have that look in his eye that there was doubt or fear. Yeah, he had a little bit of hard luck, but I think his numbers were deceiving.

“He started making some progress where he was squaring balls up but they just weren’t finding a hole. He was hitting them right at people.”

Had Kouzmanoff shown a lack of confidence, “we would have made the move,” Towers said. “He was the same guy who was hitting .108 in early May as he was at the end of the year. That’s what’s great about Kouz. He’s got a lot of self-confidence and knew that he would eventually make adjustments and get comfortable and work his way out of it.”

Despite his rough April and early May, Kouzmanoff batted .303 overall in May, which merely pulled his average up to .204 by the end of the month.

He finished the season batting .275, with 18 homers, 74 RBIs and a .457 slugging percentage.