First Impressions: Manny Machado Joins San Diego Padres; (Saves Baseball?)
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Today (or yesterday, depending on when our editor gets to this) news broke that Manny Machado (finally) signed a massive contract with the San Diego Padres, thus ending a free agency that lasted – wait for it – longer than his tenure with the Los Angeles Dodgers last season.
I have a bunch of thoughts and first impressions, so I’m just going to kind of spill them below, in no particular order.
- 10 years and $300 million is a massive contract. In fact, it is the largest free agent contract in the history of American professional sports, measured in just dollar value. Controlling for inflation and other factors, it looks to be about the 10th biggest contract in baseball history. (Way more on that here.) I guess that seems right for Machado, a young superstar who’s likely just entering his prime. Though he’s about 1/3 more valuable as a third basemen, where his defense is Gold Glove Caliber, than at short, his preferred position, where his defense is below average.
- With no deferred money and a 10 year span, this looks like a classic free agent superstar deal, a la Albert Pujols, Alex Rodriguez, Todd Helton, Derek Jeter, Robinson Cano, et al. I kind of think it might be one of the last. Teams seem to be coming to appreciate the importance of roster flexibility and seem to be ok with huge annual values of contracts if the lengths are limited. Also, with the exception of A-Rod, it’s hard to name a 10 year or so contract that ended up working out for the team through the life of the deal. I wrote extensively about the value of short term deals a few years ago and I wouldn’t be surprised to see AAVs skyrocket while overall dollar amounts stay sort of flat going forward.
- Guys like SI’s Tom Verducci who published stories in the wake of this signing about how Machado’s deal proves that baseball’s free agency is fine and healthy are comically and frustratingly wrong. Machado got a huge deal (arguably smaller than we were expecting a couple years ago, I might add) but he didn’t get it until just a couple days before Spring Training games start! Teams should have been clamoring over themselves for this guy. Not to mention the fact that Bryce Harper, Dallas Kuechel, Marwin Gonzalez and many others are still perplexingly on the market. Baseball’s free agency is still extremely, upsettingly broken. However…
- This deal is great for baseball, no matter how you slice it. First, one of the game’s second or even third-tier franchises (by size of market and general relevance) just ponied up $300 million for a premiere star. The $325 million extension the Marlins gave Giancarlo Stanton a couple of years ago showed that even smaller market teams in baseball can afford to spend, but we all kind of knew that that wasn’t on the up and up – the Marlins were never really going to pay all that money and everyone knew it. This is different. The Padres really are (probably) going to pay. And they signed the contract not just to keep a homegrown star, but to get a new one. That’s a big deal and is a flash of real health in the game.
- Plus, the NL West is loaded. Sure, the Diamondbacks are disappointedly giving up and dumping talent and salary, but the Dodgers are back to back NL pennant winners, the Rockies made the playoffs this year, and the Padres just did this. In addition, this division now boasts some of the biggest young stars in the game between Machado, Corey Seager, and Nolan Arenado.
- The Padres are a weird team. They’ve now spent almost a half a billion dollars on their lineup over the last couple winters, but their pitching is… bad. They have not one single starter I would be comfortable running out there for a contender, and all the money owed to Machado and Eric Hosmer makes it kind of unlikely that they go after Kuechel. What’s AJ Preller’s plan here? I guess realistically the team is unlikely to compete in 2019 and will start trading from its deep farm system over the next few months to bring on some pitching. Come 2021, watch out!
- Bryce Harper? Phillies? Giants? $330 million? Let’s go!
