San Diego Padres: Revisiting Manny Machado’s deal
By Ben Fadden
After Manny Machado’s first season of a $300 million contract with the San Diego Padres, let’s look back and see if it is still a good signing.
Manny Machado was signed by A.J. Preller and the San Diego Padres at the beginning of Spring Training with the thought that he was going to be the Manny Machado we saw in Baltimore, but that wasn’t really the case.
People forget that he still hit 32 home runs in 2019, but what they do remember is the .256 batting average he had.
While it wasn’t Machado’s best year or anything the Padres were hoping for, he is still under contract for nine more seasons and I don’t see how he doesn’t have a comeback season in 2020.
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You have to remember he didn’t have Fernando Tatis Jr. on base for a few months due to his hamstring and back injuries in addition to not having a healthy Hunter Renfroe and no Franmil Reyes in front or behind him to give him protection, which could’ve been a factor to his mediocre numbers in the second half.
Look, Manny Machado is a superstar player and he was still amazing on a daily basis over at the hit corner so to say that it was a bad decision for San Diego to not sign a future Hall of Famer would be stupid.
There are some positives though if you want to compare his contract to that of Bryce Harper who actually got more money.
Although Bryce had a better year, as his war was 4.2 compared to 3.1, he is not leaving Philadelphia for 12 more seasons.
Machado is going to age better than Harper, as Machado is a much better defender than Harper and I think Harper will age like Albert Pujols has which means he will end up fitting a DH role once it happens.
On the other hand, I don’t see Machado declining defensively so he will be playing third base for pretty much the entirety of his career.
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So, I think when we revisit Manny Machado’s free-agent deal with the Padres, there is no one that is going to say it is a bad deal for both him and San Diego.