The Padres Are Actually Signing Manny Machado
According to those estimated franchise values at Forbes, the San Diego Padres are in the bottom half of baseball’s 30 organizations. Perhaps even more relevant, the Padres are routinely among baseball’s bottom ten spenders. The Padres have pretty much never behaved like a big-market team, and after long enough, that creates a pretty rigid impression. One thinks of the Padres the way one might think of, say, the Reds. When it comes to high-profile free agents, you feel comfortable ruling them out. Why would you think the Padres would be a player?
Of course, teams can choose to change. And as much as we might still think of free agency as directing players toward certain big spenders, you never know when someone might surprise you. One offseason ago, the biggest free-agent contract went to Eric Hosmer, and it was given by the Padres. And now this offseason, the biggest free-agent contract so far is going to Manny Machado, and it’s being given by the Padres. According to reports, the deal will be worth $300 million over ten years, with an opt-out after year five. It’s close enough to the contract we’ve always expected. I just don’t think anyone really expected the team.
The Padres read the market, and they chose to be aggressive, where other clubs were more cautious. Now the door could be open a year ahead of schedule.
I’m not sure when the Padres decided to go in this direction. My sense is that they were *not* one of the early suitors. One wouldn’t have expected them to be, what with the new Hosmer contract on the books and everything. It was only a month ago Padres ownership caused a stir by somewhat opening the books, and discussing the team’s finances. One select excerpt:
The Padres say they plan to supplement a young core of homegrown prospects with a handful of more costly veteran players. They will add those players, they say, when they believe those additions can make up the difference between what they are now and what they hope to be.
That most likely, after another season of development in 2019, will be in 2020 or ’21.
And from further below:
Player payroll for ’19 is pretty close to set, though Fowler allows it could grow if Preller convinces him a player (or players) would help them substantially. The Padres remain actively listening and trying to work trades.
But making a move that greatly increases payroll now is highly unlikely.
No, nothing there is formally ruled out, and you also have to consider the possibility the Padres might’ve been intentionally keeping things quiet. But things can stay only so quiet when you’re dealing with a high-profile free agent and a high-profile regular agent. Early on, I doubt the Padres thought they had a real chance to sign Machado. Even though everyone knew they needed a third baseman, they were connected to lower-profile free agents, and trade possibilities. And then the weeks just kept on going by.
The Yankees kept downplaying their level of interest. The Dodgers didn’t signal their intent to engage. A number of big-budget teams didn’t appear meaningfully interested in Bryce Harper, limiting his pool, and therefore also limiting Machado’s pool as a consequence. Teams all have their own reasons for making the decisions they do, but when big spenders stay away from the biggest free agents, it doesn’t mean those free agents don’t get jobs. It means those free agents become more available to more unlikely contenders. Machado didn’t exactly fall in the Padres’ lap — this is still a $300-million commitment. Unadjusted for inflation, it’s the biggest free-agent contract in the history of North American sports. But the Padres saw that Machado was truly, actually gettable. They could be the team to offer the $300 million.
Weird things can happen in free agency when said free agency drags on for a number of months. Machado’s slow market is presumably what pulled the Padres in, and now they’re the winner of the sweepstakes. It’s undoubtedly a shock, given the Padres’ spending history, and given their 66-96 record. And yet, look at it another way, and this is an excellent fit. Maybe even an obvious fit. Machado and the Padres should go perfectly together.
The Padres needed a short-term third baseman. They also needed a long-term third baseman. The only team projected worse at third base was the Royals. Machado will probably play third now, with Fernando Tatis Jr. close to settling in at short, and with Luis Urias close to settling in at second. Machado is a premium third baseman, and he is just 26 years old.
This isn’t one of those long-term contracts given to a guy entering his 30s. Machado is currently in what should be the prime of his career. He’s younger than Aaron Judge and Kris Bryant. According to Steamer/600, which puts everyone’s projection over the same 600-plate-appearance denominator, Machado projects in 2019 as baseball’s tenth-best position player, between Christian Yelich and Alex Bregman. Courtesy of Dan Szymborski, here’s a table of Machado’s ten-year ZiPS projections:
| Year | BA | OBP | SLG | G | WAR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | .281 | .348 | .501 | 156 | 5.7 |
| 2020 | .279 | .348 | .503 | 152 | 5.4 |
| 2021 | .277 | .348 | .503 | 149 | 5.2 |
| 2022 | .276 | .346 | .503 | 145 | 5.0 |
| 2023 | .276 | .345 | .494 | 140 | 4.5 |
| 2024 | .273 | .341 | .483 | 135 | 4.0 |
| 2025 | .270 | .337 | .469 | 129 | 3.4 |
| 2026 | .265 | .330 | .449 | 122 | 2.7 |
| 2027 | .259 | .321 | .428 | 114 | 1.9 |
| 2028 | .251 | .310 | .401 | 106 | 1.0 |
It takes a while for Machado to turn, and we’re looking at a ten-year total of 38.8 WAR. According to Szymborski’s calculations, Machado should end up worth more than $300 million. I will point out that I came up with my own numbers. I looked for players since 1950 who were comparable to Machado between the ages of 22 and 25. Those same players, between the ages of 26 and 35, were worth an average of 29.3 WAR, with a 30.1-WAR median. That’s worse, but still good — that’s a decade of comfortably above-average performance. Baseball, of course, has changed, and aging curves have changed, and every single player is unique. But great players tend to stay good for a while. Manny Machado is a great player.
Yes, he’s joining the Padres an offseason after they lost almost 100 games. The Padres, though, are very obviously on the upswing, and with Machado in the fold, their 2019 depth chart should project somewhere in the vicinity of .500. There’s a high degree of volatility, given all the young players on the team, and with a pitching breakout or two, the Padres could end up right in the thick of it. It’s a pretty complete-looking group of position players, and on the pitching side, at least the bullpen is strong. No, the 2019 Padres are no one’s version of a super-team. But this is about so much more than just the one season right ahead. Let’s build off work from Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel, and plot every team’s number of quality prospects, setting a cutoff at FV50:
The Padres are in first place, three players ahead of the Braves and Rays. Yes, prospect evaluation is subjective, but the Padres’ farm draws rave reviews across the board. It is possibly or probably the best farm system in baseball, topped by Tatis, and this doesn’t even count good young players already in the majors, like Franmil Reyes or Joey Lucchesi. As a general rule, some prospects bust, but as another general rule, the more good prospects you have, the more you can expect to work out. Talent is coming. It’s already begun to arrive. Machado is parachuting in as a star player, for the rest of the Padres to build around.
Before, the Padres might’ve been eyeing 2020 or 2021. With Machado, they might still be eyeing 2020 or 2021, but now the odds of contention in 2019 are improved. They wouldn’t be the first rebuilding team to arrive a year ahead of time. Not that you can always talk yourself into that, because rebuilds aren’t always smooth and predictable, but the Padres do appear to be in increasingly good shape. It’s just going to end up a question of their future budgets.
Here’s why the Padres see Machado as a fit: He’s great, he’s young, and they have a strong farm system. The whole reason why good, young, club-controlled players are so valuable is because they perform at a high level while costing hardly anything. The Padres figure Tatis will be good, and it’ll be a while before he’s truly expensive. With so many young players in place or on the way, the Padres are confident they’ll get a lot of production for pennies on the dollar. That gives a team the flexibility to make major investments elsewhere. The Padres believe they can afford Machado because so many other players will be underpaid for the next several seasons.
The one tricky thing is that Machado’s contract doesn’t exist in isolation. It exists alongside Eric Hosmer’s $144-million contract. It also exists alongside Wil Myers‘ $83-million contract. Machado is going to make $30 million per season. Hosmer makes $21 million each year until 2023. Myers is a year away from costing $22.5 million. In 2020, 2021, and 2022, Hosmer, Myers, and Machado will make more than $70 million combined. Just a couple seasons ago, the Padres’ opening-day payroll was about $70 million, total.
You can see how things might end up getting tight. The Padres will get a steady infusion of young talent, but good young talent becomes increasingly expensive, and the Padres already have a large three-player commitment. It’s relatively uncommon to see such giant contracts on smaller spenders. One might be reminded of Joey Votto‘s contract with the Reds. Or Giancarlo Stanton‘s contract with the Marlins, or Joe Mauer’s contract with the Twins. There exists the distinct possibility that, in the future, the Padres won’t be so flexible to make other necessary improvements. It’ll be up to ownership to prove it’s willing to invest what it has to. I’d consider it a good sign they were willing to make a strong play for Machado in the first place. I’d also imagine the Padres have become increasingly desperate to send Myers to somebody else. It would help the team’s future, presumably, to remove him from the books, and he’s still young enough to hold certain appeal.
Long story short: In a winter of under-enthusiastic spending, the San Diego Padres, of all teams, are signing one of the best young free agents in baseball history. It is not a move without enormous risk, because the Padres can’t afford as many mistakes as a bigger-revenue organization. They already regret the decisions they made with Hosmer and Myers. Furthermore, Machado has long posted a rather dramatic home/road split, and there are more than a few concerns regarding his character. That being said, Machado to this point has been sufficiently driven to become one of the best players in the world. That doesn’t happen without obsessive dedication. The Padres believe in the track record.
They believe in the track record, and they believe in their own future. The Padres were already planning to nudge the Dodgers sometime around 2020. Now they’ve got the Dodgers’ attention a dozen months early. Doesn’t mean they’re a first-place team. They are presumably not yet a first-place team. But they’re a more dangerous team, with reinforcements coming. I’m not sure what Harper’s going to decide now, but it shouldn’t be long, and, regardless, the National League is going to be nuts.
Jeff made Lookout Landing a thing, but he does not still write there about the Mariners. He does write here, sometimes about the Mariners, but usually not.
When I saw this signing pop up on MLBTR, I literally said “What the f*ck” out loud with no context.
I think our former editor actually blinked when he knew his team snagged Machado.
I’d like to imagine that Dave spent the whole season begging them to be in on Machado and they only finally needed his case and suggestion this week.
“Fine Dave! JESUS! We’ll go get Manny.”
And Dave wept in relief.
It’s like the scene in Zero Dark Thirty when Jessica Chastain’s character keeps writing on the window of her boss “X – days since Osama found”
Brad Lidge also wept in relief once..
I’ve been beating this drum for a while, and everyone told me I was crazy. It seemed like such an obvious fit I can’t believe no one else saw it coming even before they were the rumored mystery team.
Last year they gave out a huge contract to a bad player, now all of a sudden when they are entering their contention window and have an obvious need, they won’t give out a contract to a good player?
The 2020/2021 Padres are gonna be gnarly.
2020/2021 Padres…you wanna bet something significant on that?
What bet would you like to make? Winning record? In playoff hunt? Sure, I’d say as soon as 2021 they have a winning record and are in the hunt for playoffs.
That’s your definition of gnarly? So the Mariners and Pirates were gnarly last year? Don’t trip over anything as you backpedal away from that.
“Gnarly” is a word that was uncomfortably popular in the early 1990s and pretty much irrelevant since then, so it sounds like the Pirates to me.
I personally credit it to Jeff Spicoli. And it’s always been relevant, just need to pick the right spot.
It’s a word I don’t hear much on the east coast, but it’s definitely part of popular lexicon in the West Coast
I don’t think everyone agrees that it was an obvious fit. They still won’t contend this year. I doubt they do next year. If you want Machado in two years, then let someone else eat a significant chunk of the contract and do them the favor of taking the payroll hit – you might even get some prospects for your troubles.
The stove has finally been turned on!
Lol you split the link for Fernando Tatis Jr between both dad and son (Only the Jr goes to son)?Was that on purpose?
P.S. really great assessment of the franchise’s past/present/future. I think this is a great example of when + how smaller and rebuilding teams should spend.
Annoying quirk of our mostly amazing automated player linker!
Annoying? I’d call that charming, actually.
You just need to be using a regular expression instead of doing a brute replace.
example (note white spaces). Accepts a space followed by a player name, followed by either an apostrophe and a character or another space.
/ Johan Santana(‘[a-z]| )/
//all the fun is ruined.
That contract equates to $185k per game if Manny plays in every game.
So if the Padres net $50 per ticket sold, then at $370k per home game, to break-even they need to add 600k sold tickets per season.
I think $300 million is a perfectly fair price for Machado, and arguably an underpay. But I’m less sanguine about the deal for the Padres in particular, because of the option after the 5th year. That option is tremendously significant. It means that the contract is expected to be a huge surplus for the next 5 years, but probably will be on expectation a liability for the following 5. (That’s always true of long-term signings, but it’s particularly accentuated when there’s an option because the contract will be in place only in worlds where it’s bad for the team.)
Now, San Diego has an amazing farm system. But for the next two years, the huge surplus created by the contract is probably still not enough to push the team over the top. For the following three years, it very well might be. But I’m not sure if those 3 awesome years justify the large liability (*on expectation*) during years 6-10, particularly since, say, years 6-8 are years when the homegrown core will still be providing a window for contention. If Machado is still playing in that period, he’s by definition an albatross on the team.
If your take is the first half of the deal will be more team friendly than the second half, you could have written that and left out 50% of your post. And the opt out was probably a condition for Machado signing. It’s the cost of doing business.
I don’t know, even if he’s good he’ll be 30 after 5 years, and the market for 30+ y/o free agents hasn’t looked great the past two seasons.
I think it’s possible to see a scenario where the next CBA doesn’t fix free agency and a still-good Machado doesn’t opt out of this contract.
Not every opt-out is terrible for the team. The Yankees are really happy to have Masahiro Tanaka at his current salary, despite the fact that he declined an opt-out last offseason.
I don’t know how many times we have to go over this, but:
People tend to make the wrong comparison with the opt-out, which is why people assume it is always bad for the team. We tend to compare the scenario where a player does well and opts out to the scenario where they don’t and don’t opt out, but that comparison never actually occurs in real life–either the player plays well or they don’t. You don’t control that, but you do control whether you give the opt-out.
In the scenario where the player plays poorly, the opt-out is irrelevant to the team, and in fact it is a good thing because the team has saved money by trading the opt-out for paying them more money.
In the scenario where the player plays well, the opt-out is usually good for the player because they can probably earn more money somewhere else (usually, but not always; this is the bad decision WTM alludes to). But it can also benefit the team, since the back half of the contract is nearly always subsidizing the first half; you essentially got the front half of the contract subsidized by something you don’t pay. The only way it’s bad for the team is if the decline doesn’t happen, but the Max Scherzer’s of the world are few and far between, so this doesn’t happen as nearly as often as you would think.
The fact that Machado’s opt-out comes roughly halfway through the contract is a huge win for the Padres, since if ZiPs forsees the decline coming after that (and it is correct, which may not be true) then Machado may opt-out, letting the Padres reap substantial benefit from Machado’s success in the front end of the contract, while Machado leaves to cash in somewhere else on the back end. And if he doesn’t, then it’s irrelevant to the team, and nice that they gave it to him because it means they didn’t give him something else.
Well said. David Price’s contract is a good example of this. After the 2015 season, Max Scherzer signed a 7/210 deal with the Nationals with no opt-out clause. The next off-season, Price signed a 7/217 deal with the Red Sox with an opt-out after the third year. Price, like Scherzer, was 30 when he signed his deal, but had a stronger track record than Scherzer did in his pre-FA seasons. It would be reasonable to assume Price would have gotten about $33-35m per year instead of $31m per year if he didn’t sign the opt-out.
However, the opt-out CAN be a bad situation for the team if they are stupid enough to back-load the deal in the post opt-out years, like the Marlins did with Stanton. Price’s contract was fairly level ($30m per year before the opt-out, about $32m per year after), so the opt-out gave Price some protection against the opportunity lost to get a higher AAV in a more inflated FA market. This is exactly what Greinke was doing when he opted out. In Stanton’s case, he got a $25m AAV over the length of his contract, BUT, at the time of his opt-out in 2020 his remaining contract is worth over $31m AAV for 7 years. So, while the deal is a bargain to the team in the pre-opt-out years, the chance of having a late-contract albatross on your books is a lot greater than if the deal wasn’t so back-loaded.
“In the scenario where the player plays poorly, the opt-out is irrelevant to the team, and in fact it is a good thing because the team has saved money by trading the opt-out for paying them more money.”
Assuming the option is properly/fairly valued, of course.
5 years is a significant amount of time. It’s not like San Diego would be short-changed of an opportunity to contend.
From what I can tell, Manny hits like a “superstar” at Camden Yards but like a “pretty good hitter for a shortstop, not so great for a third baseman” everywhere else…
That’s certainly been the history: career 137 wRC+ at home vs. 104 on the road.
It is a bit odd that he had similar home/road splits during his time with the Dodgers in a very different home park than Camden Yards: 141 wRC+ at home vs. 105 on the road . We’re down to small sample sizes for this split, though (125 PA’s at home, 171 PA’s on the road), so I doubt that it’s worth reading much into that split.
He parties to much on the road, I’d wager! Figuratively of course
Tough to draw a Camden-specific conclusion from that.
Maybe dude can’t sleep in hotel beds, or has a tough time replicating his gameday routine on the road. Most players perform better at home than on the road, though it’s less extreme than Machado’s been to-date. Plenty of possible explanations besides “he’s only great in Baltimore,” and the aggregate result is a damn good player.
COOOOORS
His split is almost entirely from increased power and Camden Yards annually ranks as one of the very best environments for right-handed power.
H: 106 HR .295/.353/.533 BB% 8.1% K% 15.6% wrc+ 137
A: 69 HR .271/.319/.443 BB% 6.5% K% 17.2% wrc+ 104
There is undoubtedly a sizable split, but it does not look like the split is almost entirely from increased power.
Also, I’m not sure I would classify being 7th out of 30 in HR as R park factor as “one of the very best” environment.
A quick and dirty look at Machado’s ranking in HR/FB and Exit Velocity
2015: 26/141 and 36/199
2016: 52/146 and 45/186
2017: 66/144 and 10/182
2018: 40/140 and 14/186
I live in Maryland. 2018 was an exceptionally wet year in the mid-Atlantic area, breaking numerous records for rainfall. That kept temperatures down.
2014 was an exceptionally cool summer; many days in the 70s when the average is in the high 80s. (Look at the O’s pitching staff for 2014: Tillman, Norris, Chen, and M. Gonzalez had FIPs higher than their ERAs.) Those two years probably suppressed the park factors for Camden Yards.
I’m confused as to why you would say that when the statistics you posted confirm that it “is almost entirely from increased power.” Machado has a career BABIP of .304 at home and .298 on the road, so it’s the balls going over the fence that account for almost all of the difference between his home and road performance. He does walk a little more and strike out a little less at home, but that’s probably a result of pitchers being aware that he’s more of a threat to go deep in Camden Yards and trying to nibble around the strike zone.
Camden increases walks in general for whatever reason.
It’s the pitching staff lol… Park factors are always at the mercy of the players on the home team roster.
In case you weren’t joking, park factors are calculated by contrasting home and away performance. Orioles pitchers aren’t any good on the road either.
Eno Sarris did a piece for The Athletic about park factors using Andrew Perpetuas “High Drive” statcast measure for well hit balls. Interestingly the Dodgers, 1.207, come out as the most favorable hitters park with Baltimore, 1.205, in 2nd.
San Diego is 13th, 1.034.
1.000 is average.
San Francisco is last at 0.718.
Colorado is 4th at 1.182
Got a link? This sounds interesting. I know park factors are noisy but Dodger Stadium being the most hitter-friendly stadium is like a Metallica concert.
Tried to reply with the link but it does not seem to be showing up. If you google “Eno Sarris Park Factors” you can find it. LAD has the biggest “positive” differential in park factors comparing FG factors to the ones Eno came up with.
In a larger park a pitcher is going to pitch to contact a little bit more, increasing the number of well hit balls. Doesn’t really mean those well hit balls are going anywhere but an outfielders glove.
That’s not entirely accurate, though. I can’t find splits by park here on FanGraphs, so I looked on BRef. His tOPS+ was 115 at Camden Yards, but there were 6 parks where it was higher, including at Petco. Doesn’t really mean much, honestly.
For his career, Machado has 20 PA’s at Petco Park. That’s such a small sample that it doesn’t have any predictive value.
Dude needs to take his wife on the road with him.
“pretty good hitter for a shortstop, not so great for a third baseman”
The perception of 3B as primarily an offensive position is woefully inaccurate, and heavily skewed by the few big bat guys at the top of the all-time leaderboard. In reality, 3B as a group tend to be most similar to 2B rather than 1B/COF/DH types, both positions fluctuating right around the 100 OPS+ mark, with short somewhat below that and first above.
I’m glad this was mentioned, although it really deserved more attention. Machado’s home / road split is not only massive but clearly attributable to Camden Yards given that it comes almost entirely from extra power at home and Camden Yards has consistently been a top five park for right-handed power. Machado has hit 106 home runs at home versus 69 on the road. His slugging percentage is .533 at home versus .443 on the road. His wRC+ is 137 at home versus 104 on the road. Given that San Diego suppresses right handed power, it is extremely likely that Manny Machado will not come anywhere close to the batting production that San Diego paid for.
A strong home / road split is commonplace, and it’s telling that his split continued while he was a Dodger. Without know what a “normal” split is for MLB hitters, it’s hard to tell if this matters looking forward.
The MLB overall home/road split has been between 5 and 9 points of wRC+ each of the last 3 seasons, so a 33 point home/road split is much larger than normal.
It’s the opposite of Realmuto’s anti-home split.
nice
Yet another FA that exceeded the Fangraphs expectations (Kiley and crowd) for contract value.
And more evidence of teams spending to compete.
Depends on who you ask or “chat” with –
What happened to all the collusion?!? I guess we’re still looking for it….
You sure that is the Padres intention? I am not. What are they going to do for SP? This isn’t going to give them a chance in the division. This might have more in common with the Stanton signing in the end than you are thinking. I have a feeling that competing isn’t necessarily what this was about. Maybe it is just a PR move.
“Yet another FA that exceeded the Fangraphs expectations”
But it comes in a full 30% below what the self-discrediting clowns (particularly Jeff Todd) predicted at MLBTR. Aside from being a lousy writer, Todd ought to be humiliated by this margin of error, but I suppose his keeping his head up his own ass insulates him from realizing it.
The comments of FanGraphs is definitely the place to take shot at others writers from another site altogether…
Wow.
And what reputable baseball site do YOU write for…?
Wonder if they’d be more apt to re-open talks with Cleveland on Kluber now. This team has dreadfully little starting pitching, and a lot of prospects to deal from.
Getting Kluber for Keuchel-like AAVs might be worth it if they’re hoping to be legitimate contenders for the next three years, even despite the prospect cost.
Very astute comment. The Padres should take the “Bird in the hand is worth two in the bush” approach and send Gore and an outfielder or three to the Indians.
Yup Yup Love it all both posters
Gore, Franchy, and another prospect.
But Bird is with the Yankees. And the Padres already sent Hand to the Indians. What’s Matt Bush up to these days?
Not sure how open Cleveland is to trading Kluber at this point. Their goal in shopping Kluber was to clear salary and they´ve already done that. So I think they´d have to be completely blown away by an offer to trade him now. Otherwise, what´s the point from Cleveland´s perspective?
Beyond that, I´m not sure San Diego has what Cleveland needs/wants. Which is MLB-ready impact bats in the outfield. Granted they´d probably be open to MLB-ready impact bats at any position but I doubt the Padres are willing to trade Tatis. And I doubt the Indians want Mejia back. So that leaves Urias which only works if the Indians can find someone to take Kipnis. Even then, I´m not sure why Cleveland would do that. They´d likely be worse for the next year or two. And for what? To save salary they no longer need to save?
I totally agree with this. Cleveland should need to be blown away to deal Kluber, and if the return didn’t include Tatis, which I expect it wouldn’t, then they may not be a match.
I do wonder if you could couple one of Renfroe, Margot, Cordero or Reyes with one of their elite prospects to make it work, but with Cleveland contending now, I agree it’s probably unrealistic.
As of now, Cleveland trading a starter is almost certainly off the table until next off-season and then it will be Bauer that moves, not Kluber.
And by then they may not be looking for outfielders.
Ultimately, I think part of the problem is that many of San Diego´s elite prospects are pitchers. Which also happens to be the strength of Cleveland, both at the major and minor league level. Granted, you can never have too much pitching but it´s hard to justify giving up a two-time Cy Young winner if the headline return is a minor league pitcher. All the while claiming that you’re trying to win a World Series.
It was always hard to justify. But, they still (for some reason) considered it.
With Machado not going to White Sox and with Harper almost certainly going there either, Cleveland has zero need to trade or acquire anyone for the season. Heck, Cleveland can start their planning for the playoffs now. I expect Cleveland to be trading at the deadline, if anything.
That 2019 Yankee juggernaut is still going to be very hard to beat.
Based on team needs, I see Cleveland wanting Urias and one of those young OFs, especially Cordero and Renfroe because they are desperate for a RHB power bat.
Those plus a 45+ FV starter could do it. They aren’t going to be serious about offers that aren’t blowing them away because they don’t want to rebuild and his contract is team friendly
I wonder where else SD may be able to go on the trade market. It’s hard to find cost-controlled starting pitching on teams that also are not near contention.
Perhaps Detroit and Michael Fulmer are a fit. Or maybe even Pittsburgh and Jameson Taillon. I could see them calling Toronto on Sanchez and / or Stroman, or maybe even Arizona on Robbie Ray or Zac Godley, but neither of those options is particularly exciting.
I agree with the posit that they may be limited in payroll flexibility now, so Keuchel is likely out. So are the Zach Greinke’s who may be available on the trade market. Bumgarner needs to be paid next year himself, so he may not be a fit.
What’s clear is that they’ll need to do something, and likely something drastic. A rotation HEADLINED by Joey Lucchesi, Robbie Erlin and Eric Lauer does not a contender make. Chris Paddack may be close, but Mackenzie Gore isn’t. They might need to get creative.
Wil Myers could be a good chip to offset the salary of an expensive SP in a trade. Problem is that it doesn’t seem like there are many of those types on the market, other than the EXTREMELY expensive Greinke, who probably has less surplus value than Myers right now.
I might agree, but given their surplus of OF versus their deficiency in SP, I think they’d sign for a Greinke for Myers swap. I just don’t know how open to that Arizona would be if they’d only be dealing Greinke for salary relief. They may still be holding out for a prospect return, as they probably should be.
I live in San Diego and just got back from a lunch meeting with a bunch of engineers, and the #1 topic of discussion in the room was the Padres. The speaker opened the meeting with “Happy Manny Machado Day!” I had never heard a single one of these dudes mention the Padres before, or baseball in general. People here are VERY excited about this.
See you at opening day!
Don’t they know that he doesn’t hustle?
Turn the record over and play the other side.
congrats. so happy for padres fans, they deserve this
That’s pretty cool! I love seeing people who aren’t baseball fans get excited about baseball.
Padres pay a chunk of change for one of the better players in baseball. Overpay? Probably on the back end, for sure. But if they’ve valued their prospects.younger players correctly, they should be competitive for a while.
now sign harper, you cowards
Of course I doubt it will happen, but I would really prefer to see Harper sit out this year (and then take a one-year deal and fail miserably trying to come back next year while Boras dies suddenly).
I’d have to learn to blow smoke rings with a cigar if that happened.
Heyman says they’re still in on Harper. Everyone else says they’re out. Lol
but now the odds of contention in 2019 are improved.
No, it’s really not.
This is true. Especially if he plays SS. To me, that will be the telling factor as to the underlying motivation of the signing.
Vegas odds for the Padres WS have moved from 100:1 last weekend to 40:1 last I heard today. The odds literally improved. Not an opinion.
In a literal sense, yes. But they are still zero. That is a sucker bet for people overly excited by this transaction.
What a great day for baseball!!! A smaller market team on the rise gets in at a fair compelling deal for a mega star! This can’t be taken lightly this is EXACTLY how we want the process to work ! Again, great day for baseball, Congrats Sd and Im a Dodgers fan, cant wait for the rivalry !
I’m glad Machado got a fair contract. I would have been really annoyed had he held out this long to “only” get 8/240 or something. That said, I could see a scenario where the Padres rebuild isn’t going as planned for one reason or another, and looking to flip Machado for a few prospects and salary relief.
I would’ve bet my shirt he signed in the Big Apple.
Oh, wait.
1) I am not sure the Padres are making good decisions. I am not sure what they are building.
2) Tatis is not close to settling in at short. He hasn’t played a game above AA, where he ran a K rate close to 30%. I figure Manny is likely going to play SS.
A couple things here:
1) he has 450 PA at AA and has dominated. He is ready for AAA at the very least.
2) A 27.7% strikeout rate is almost as close to 25 as it is to 30, so that’s a silly roundup.
3) He was 19.
1) Ready for AAA is not close to settling in at short. So we are in agreement. There is not “at the very least” – that doesn’t mean anything. Skipping AAA would be highly ill-advised. There is no reason for the Padres to entertain that idea. He has not dominated AA – if a rc+ in the upper 120s is domination, then what do you call 150+? Hes a good prospect for sure, but not ready either.
2) Its literally not closer to 25 than 30. It certainly qualifies as close to 30%. Literally everyone would round that up to 28, which make 30 even more rational. Then there is the small reality that you are discarding his PA from 2017, which pushes it closer to 30. There is absolutely nothing silly about that roundup – certainly less silly than implying that he will be up soon. A K rate in the upper 20s is a problem. If it goes up at all then it is a massive obstacle.
3) We are not talking about his prospect status. His age is irrelevant to the Padres contention and Manny’s defensive role this year.
I am not really sure what you are attempting to bicker about. I am pretty clearly right about Tatis not being a factor in Manny’s role for 2019. It is always fun to flesh out an argument if I have time I guess…
They are building a competitive baseball team, one piece at a time, by offering a fair-market contract to an outstanding 26 year-old baseball player. It is a good and smart thing for a baseball team to do, independent of whatever else happens.
Meh. Saying it’s a fair-market contract is self-defining. It’s literally an agreed contract between two parties in a free market. It would have been a “fair” contract if Machado signed for 7/175, if that were his best offer.
As for whether it’s a good or smart thing, this contract suffers from the winner’s curse, like every other auction-based FA contract does. For example, the Phillies GM came out yesterday and said, basically, “good for SD, but we didn’t think Machado was worth that contract, and so it was better to walk away.”
Basically, you could make the same comments you made here about the Eric Hosmer contract. I think every FA should get as much as he can, and whatever the most he can get is “fair.” But whether this is a good or smart thing to do from a team perspective is a different issue, and certainly isn’t independent of whatever else happens from here.
Guy hit .286/.355/.507 with 16 homers and 16 SB last year in AA as a 19 year old. Who the hell cares how much he strikes out?
Focusing on K rates for hitters in 2019 is the same as complaining that guys don’t hit singles anymore. Baseball has passed you by if you still think k-rate matters.
“Baseball has passed you by if you still think k-rate matters.”
You’ve come to the exact opposite conclusion you should have from the league wide increase in K rate. It’s more important than ever to *not* strike out.
It seems that the only teams making moves to compete are in the NL this off-season (Mets, Reds, Pads, Phils) while most of the AL has just conceded to the Usual AL Playoff Teams?
On a separate note, I wonder if the Pads regret the Hosmer signing (frankly, if they just switched Franmil to 1b and let him play, he might well outproduce Hosmer), or if they view it as a necessary prelude to this kind of signing.
Not sure they saw it as a prelude. It certainly wasn’t to butter up Boras, since Machado isn’t one of his clients.
I think the Yankees, Red Sox, and Astros are all such monsters in the AL that most other teams realize that they have almost no chance (Indians aside).
I still don’t realize why the Red Sox haven’t either resigned Kimbrel or some other good reliever.
“I still don’t realize why the Red Sox haven’t either resigned Kimbrel or some other good reliever.”
The Red Sox seem to only pay market price for pitchers with great reluctance.
You mean relief pitchers? They sure as hell paid market price for Sale, Porcello and Price
Might have something to do with their payroll coming up against the +$40M above CBT threshold.
Probably waiting out the market like they did with JD Martinez last year (that deal wasnt announced until Feb 20, and wasnt finalized until Feb 26)
I think they decided a 100 wins are enough.
Because Kimbrel is asking for crazy money? He’s a reliever with peripherals indicating a decline. No one is paying him $80mm+.
I highly doubt Hosmer had much of an influence on Manny’s decision. It has always seemed like it’s been 95% about the guaranteed dollar amount for him.
https://twitter.com/Ken_Rosenthal/status/1097946207169794049
https://twitter.com/JonHeyman/status/1097947368262172672
I’m 99% sure SD’s front office regrets the Hosmer signing.
But he makes great catches that save errors for the other infielders.
The Rays have done what they can with the smallest pile of money in baseball. You know, The Rays just don’t have that Padres money.
Your paragraph on the Padres’ financials is why I think Wil Myers is not long in San Diego.
They already have been shopping outfielders, and seemed to be deciding between sending out one of the young guys vs. sending out Myers. Half expecting the Yankees to swoop in here and get him on a discount.
Myers isn’t good enough to make the Yankees as a ball boy, let alone an outfielder.
Yankees have to be smart enough to know that they have an excellent team and one of the few holes is Voit/Bird at 1B
Myers is a career 109 wRC+ hitter with a Steamer projection of 106 wRC+ for 2019. That’s not better than performance/projections from a Voit/Bird combination. The only real advantage to Myers over them is positional versatility.
Myers actually rated quite well in the OF in 2018 (+7 DRS and +18.2 UZR/150), plus he can run and doesn’t need to be platooned. He’s quite a bit more valuable than Bird
in his 6 year career he’s had basically 4 half seasons and 2 full seasons and has a 10.1 career WAR. He’s not that good…and I actually think he has a chance to be really good but dude cannot stay on the field.
You vastly overrate how good Myers is.
He’s definitely better than Greg Bird
Wil Myers is going to make 67.5 million in three years from 2020/2022. Is he better than guys like Greg Bird or Wilmer Flores? Yeah, if everything else is equal. But when guys like Flores are getting released, and settling for 1 yr, 6 million dollar deals, and Greg Bird is making 1.5 mill, this is not a tough choice to make…
idk if any team is inclined to take on a good portion of his salaries the next few seasons. there was the reported wil myers for mike leake deal earlier this offseason, which would look like a good move now, but that ship probably has sailed
Hopefully this works out for them as well as the Hosmer signing has so far.
You misspelled your screen name, you meant Snide.
Better hope prospects work out,otherwise your stuck paying Machado,Myers and Hosmer about 65mill a year to maybe finish .500
This is what I keep coming back to…everyone is counting on all their prospects to pan out. It ain’t going to happen. It never does. Their best bet is to trade a few for more proven commodities (like the Cubs and Red Sox did) and hopefully keep the ones that do blossom.
Who’s saying they won’t? They have 13 of the top 130 prospects on the Fangraphs’ rankings. It almost goes without saying that some of those guys will get traded.
Fortunately for Manny, he can take as long as he wants to count his $300M.
Unfortunately for Manny, the only Park Factor (according to FG) that favors him in San Diego requires hustling (3B as R = 109).
The White Sox failed miserably as Lord Jaffe predicted
seeing kenny williams so shocked about this too isnt a very good look
Seriously, why would he say something like that publicly?
To convince the fans that his failure to sign Manny wasn’t for lack of trying, and to shift the blame for said failure away from himself and onto Manny.
You think the White Sox should have offered more than 10/$300m?!?
As Bill James analytically shows over on his web site, Machado hasn’t been great. He was supposed to be (like Bryce), but he hasn’t quite been (like Bryce). He’s been good-to-very-good (depending upon how suspicious you are of those Camden splits, and what you think of his defense now as opposed to a couple of years ago) at a young age.
Assuming he has a full no-trade clause, I’m still OK with the signing. (if he only has a limited one, I do think it’s a good signing then) Particularly in comparison with a Bryce who was so awful in the outfield last year. But the Padres are getting a very good player from 26-35, not a great one.
Bill James used the same formula he used to claim that ’17 Hosmer was more valuable than ’17 Judge to “analytically show” that Machado is not great.
15th in WAR over the last 6 years, how is that not great? He’s not the hitter Harper is, but a much better fielder. And if anything he’s getting better as a hitter. Better than Harper? Who knows, but I’d hate to have live on the difference.
What is Bill James’ website?
google.com
What? They basically have been in MLB the same length…Harper has 3957 plate appearances, Machado 4074…Machado has 33.8 career WAR, Harper 27.4.
Take that Tony Clark you double first named fuck
You sound nice.
Spitball, Tony Clark knows he’s just been posturing. He knows the average salary has gone up every year and that the player’s share of baseball revenue has stayed roughly the same every year (per The Athletic).
He’s laughing over this.
Johnston, I mostly agree with you. Isn’t that great for him? Isn’t he doing his job? Are you actually complimenting him?
I disagree that he is laughing. Labor battles aren’t jokes and labor only ever gets a fair shake with effort. The other side is always trying hard.
Woah, that seemed aggressive. Which team do you own?
love this move. rebuilding team gets an elite player even though their window might not be open when other rebuilders are so casually passing. padres have my attention already because i love a lot of their young MLBers and now i have another reason to be intrigued. you can realistically think of them perhaps being in contention this july and with all that propsect ammo they can make a couple real impact moves. go dave cameron, he must be so hyped and go padres. their fans really deserve this.
I keep seeing people talk about how those top 3 contacts are so far above everyone that it doesn’t fit, but that makes more sense to me. They have a lot of controllable talent and they’re filling the gaps without giving up those young guys.
Well, the main problem is Hosmer simply isn’t that good. He’s wildly overpaid at a position where it’s not hard to find above average hitters.
The only thing I’ll say is that there’s a chance MLB teams know something we don’t about his defense – if they’ve found a way to track throwing errors-saved above average by 1Bs, and kept it proprietary, it could explain the gap between industry perception and advanced metrics on Hosmer’s defense.
A better explanation is that the Padres simply made a mistake with Hosmer. Does happen. After all there were people who bought Pintos and Yugos, they couldn’t all have been thinking “well this car’s gonna suck”.
“After all there were people who bought Pintos and Yugos”
Yep, and there were lots of ‘smart’ people who bought WorldCom and Enron, too. (I wonder if Preller had either of those in his portfolio.) The world is permeated with fools being alleviated of money that they were lucky to have ever had.
Yugos were a few thousand dollars. You could have thought they might suck, but be still willing to buy one at that price. Turned out they weren’t worth it anyways, but that was hard to do at the price.
The Padres front office also said time and again how much they valued both his 1) clubhouse presence in modeling strong pro behavior for their upcoming rookies, and 2) his playoff and especially World Series experience. I have no clue how you quantify the value of those monetarily (and agree with essentially everyone that they almost certainly overpaid). But the Pads and many other professional teams clearly see significant value in those traits and throw money at them to the point where I have to believe they must be worth something. For what it’s worth, multiple young Padres credited Hosmer with helping them improve last year, especially Reyes who said that Hos’ guidance was a major contributing factor to his hot second half that has everyone so excited about him.
There’s also the fact that his signing was, essentially, a statement by ownership that they’ve decided to start trying to win.
Who’s to say whether it played a role in Machado deciding they weren’t a lock to be bottom feeders all 5 years.
These are all good points in explaining the Padres’ thinking, but here is where I struggle: shouldn’t there be a far lower cost way to get this value than signing Hosmer? As in, for no more than a few million dollars per year, can’t a team do something like sign a recently retired player (e.g, David Ross) as a mentor-type – call him assistant bench coach or something – plus add one or more additional assistant hitting coaches? Or, if it needs to be a player, overpay a far, far smaller amount to fill this role by signing a player with a profile more like “aging 4th OF’er”?
I know that Hosmer does also have some value as a player, but it just looked like such a huge overpay. Before Dave Cameron left the site, he identified Hosmer as his #1 free agent landmine and opined that an $80 to $90 million guarantee would be a justifiable contract for this skillset. Hosmer got 8 / $144 million with the money front-loaded.
Also, while I realize that teaching and doing are often very different things, I initially chuckled a bit about Hosmer’s guidance to young hitters in light of various articles at Fangraphs last off-season about Hosmer’s upside if only he could elevate his launch angle and not hit so many ground balls.
Hosmer would have to be scooping throws ten feet from the base every single inning to be worth what the Padres are paying him
On even years, at least!
Odd year coming up!
As the last remaining White Sox fan, I salute the Padres while being pissed at the Sox continued incompetence. While the Sox pat themselves on the back for their “creative” offer they disregarded Manny’s desire. Now we’re stuck with his brother-in-law and best pal, both of whom make no sense for a rebuilding team. I’m waiting for the Padres to take Rick Hahn as payment for screwing thus up and giving Tatis as a throw-in for the honor of watching James Shields consume $12MM a year and suck.
This Sox FO couldn’t build around Sale, Abreu and Eaton and they’re on track to mess up this rebuild with lack of stones, lousy drafts and no track record of player development.
I hadn’t connected the two players in relation to the White Sox. Brutal to think that in a very-nearly-real alternate universe the Padres left side next year would have been the White Sox left side. That Shields trade was a brutal gaffe that will haunt the White Sox front office for years. Bartolo tried to warn them but they wouldn’t listen…
I feel like every time Shields has gotten traded it has absolutely screwed the team who traded for him
Not the Rays
The Royals disagree.
I initially misread this as “The Padres Are Actually Not Signing Manny Machado” and just about had an aneurysm
How many games did the Orioles lose with this 300m player last year?
More than they would have without him
what is it like to spend your day on Fangraphs and still know nothing about baseball?
As a Rockies fan, I am thrilled. The Padres have committed nearly a half billion to two corner infielders who wouldn’t start at these positions for either the Rox or Dodgers.
Yeah, yeah. Get back to us when you figure out what to do with Ian Desmond. Oh wait…
I liked Ian Desmond when he played for us, so it’s sad what has become of him. Was a very good SS in his day.
Machado is:
A. Better than Arenado
B. Younger than Arenado
This makes a lot of sense, for many of the reasons Jeff points out. The Padres are loaded everywhere with talent everywhere except third base, where they have Hudson Potts who struggled a bit in his cup of coffee at AA. It would have been silly for the Padres to sign anyone to a long-term contract except at third base.
Normally, the logic the Padres lay out makes sense: You sign big time free agents when you’re closer to contention because you want free agents when they are young and most productive. But what I think happened is the Padres realized that they weren’t going to be able to sign a younger third baseman than Machado for a while. Arenado and Rendon, who are on the market next year, are older than Machado. The year after that you have Justin Turner–also older than Machado. The year after that you have Kris Bryant and Travis Shaw, who are also older than Machado, You could sign Profar in 2020/2021 or Sano in 2021/2022, and they are younger, but they’re also not anywhere near as good, have serious question marks, and they’re only about one year younger than Machado anyway. If you want to sign a stud 3rd baseman to align with your core coming up, this is basically your best option until Alex Bregman hits the FA market–if he hits the FA market. Machado fits the timeline better.
This dovetails with something that I think is the emergent theme of this FA year, which is that teams will pay for years in your 20s (and shortly thereafter) and will only pay up for years in your 30s if it’s required to get you. This is partly why Patrick Corbin got a huge deal and Dallas Keuchel is still unsigned, why Eovaldi got such a surprisingly good deal, and it’s why Harper and Machado are getting $300M or so too. Youth is valuable now.
Somebody tell the Dodgers about that last part…
One other little note: If you divide $300M by 38.8, you get about $7.7M/expected win. This doesn’t include the opt-out, which is worth something. But it’s fair to note that even if you ignore the issue of whether the cost of a win is linear, this is well shy of the $9M number that gets thrown around a lot, and even short of the 7.96M number that Jay quoted last week.
Assuming $30M constant throughout the ten years and 3% inflation, the present value of Machado’s contract is $263M which corresponds to $6.8M/WAR.
Note that using a similar method, the present value of Stanton’s contract last off-season (largely considered more or less FA market price) was $257M which corresponds to $6.4M/WAR assuming normal aging.
Judging by the contracts, I am convinced $7M/WAR is closer to the actual value than $9M/WAR.
Agreed. If teams paid $9M/expected WAR then Machado would have gotten around a $40M AAV
This is a fair point, but it seems to me that teams are generally aiming to pay $6-7.5M / WAR, and the $9M / WAR figure is seen in hindsight as a result of poor decision-making (a la Hosmer). I can’t think of many examples where the projected upside at the time of signing was $9M / WAR–except perhaps in the case of the Mighty-Genius-Duo, Sabean / Evans, signing Melancon.
I strongly agree with this point. It’s worth noting that it seems like the value of a win is definitely different for relievers than other players, and perhaps between starters and position players as well.
My impression was that the longer the term of a deal, the more of a discount the team gets (or at least expects).
Machado is a pretty good bet to be worth 5+ wins next year. Lets call it 50/50. Would it be absurd to figure that he could have signed a 1/$45M deal, if he was open to a 1 year deal?
IMO, the 10 year deal comes in at a much lower $/win because while ZiPS thinks 38.8 wins Jeff Sullivan’s methods come out more like 31 wins. The error bars over 10 years are large enough that for the player to get the security of a very long deal, they have to give up more of the value.
OT: Can somebody update the free agent tracker?
Guys like Galvis, Walker, and Hellickson signed weeks ago and are still listed as unsigned.
Washington Post: ‘Whatever happens with Harper, his contract and Machado’s will blow a large hole — below the water line — in the good ship “Owners Are Colluding” as well as the pirate vessel “Baseball Is in Trouble.”‘
So, please, no more stupid “collusion” or “baseball is in trouble” comments, okay? One of your boys got his huge payday and very soon the other one will. The average player salary will go up again this year as it always does, and the share of baseball revenue going to players will stay roughly the same as it has for years, on the high side of fifty percent. Everything is back to normal. So please, no more drama or whining about this
Let’s talk about actual baseball instead.
Thank you.
Yes this..
Seeing the other day that the Angels “have talked about a new deal” for Trout was somewhat of a relief. Even though a free-agent Trout is on an entirely different level than basically any other free-agent player, the thought of having to experience him as a FA – if Machado or Harper didn’t sign atleast a $300MM deal – looked to be miserable.
If Machado/Harper didn’t get roughly what was expected, than the narrative would assuredly get even more pronounced among fans who felt like teams were screwing the players.
On top of that, Arenado will be another ‘sweepstakes’ to go through next year that will have contractual expectations. And just like with Machado/Harper, if by January he’s not signed – the panic will commence.
However, luckily Machado signed for a good price. And as a result, Harper shall too. Everyone’s happy and the panic-narrative should go away. There’s nothing wrong going on in the game in terms of player salaries/team competitiveness..etc.
All I see is:
The days of 30-year-old+ players being absolute dead-weight on a team for large amounts of time are coming to an end, and that should be a good thing. Teams will still continue to make mistakes here and there, but at large they will mostly tread lightly with players past their prime.
Good luck. The writers who have thrown out tropes like “free agency is broken” won’t recognize that they were wrong all along.
The writers (here, and elsewhere) pontificating about free agency and “analyzing” it by anecdote are no different that than the old-timey baseball writers who had to create content every day during the season and therefore told narratives about players being clutch, and clubhouse leadership, and “all the little things, ” and GW RBI, all the other things that were crutches and pseudo-explanations for everything that happens in baseball when you don’t have the time or expertise to objectively explain it.
Machado ended up beating not only the contract crowdsourcing results from Jeff’s second article, when people pegged him for 8/240, but arguably even the first, when people had him at 8/256. The AAV is higher on 8/256, but the total commitment of 10/300 outweighs that. So yeah, this was definitely reassuring in terms of the state of the game.
With that said, average salary doesn’t always go up–it didn’t last year. And Forbes has the share of revenue going to players (MLB and MiLB) falling for three straight years, to 54.2% last season. I’m intrigued to see what happens with those two numbers after this offseason. Let’s not exaggerate about where we stand until all the numbers are in. A lot of very smart people have been arguing your point for a while now, but then a lot of very smart writers on this site have also been arguing the opposite. I don’t think we can dismiss their perspective as “stupid” quite so casually.
The Padres badly need an ACE pitcher to have any chance of beating the dodgers. Sure they have a nice bundle of Fv50 and Fv55s in the minors, but it’s a stretch to see any of them turn out to be Scherzer, Verlander, Or Kershaw. So if I worked for them I would sign Keuchel and package a nice trade for one of Cleveland’s big 3 or 4.
Thank god he didn’t sign with the fucking Yankees.
Were the Yankees ever in?
I think they gave him a Courtesy Meeting, a DVD of ‘Pride of the Yankees’, and that was it.
Is this your kid?
https://twitter.com/SNYtv/status/1097920225876590592?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1097920225876590592&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fsports.yahoo.com%2Fyoung-yankees-fan-hilarious-response-manny-machado-signing-padres-185117979.html
That’s no kid, that’s Charlie Day
Manny will have the month of October off.?
padres got a bargain
Are these 10 year ZiPS projections available somewhere?
I don’t see this as good news for Harper, Machado is a better player than Harper. If Bryce thinks he will get more money I think he is going to be waiting awhile.