What Is Machado's Signing Impact On Baseball?

The text messages raced into my inbox on Tuesday afternoon as we learned the fate of the late great short stop who played the first six years in his MLB career with the Baltimore Orioles.  Manny Machado got his 10-year $300 million dollar contact but he had to go to baseball’s lost land to retrieve it.

“It took 113 days of free agency to play out, but Manny Machado is headed to San Diego on the largest deal ever handed out to a free agent,” reported ESPN.  Is this considered a good signing? ESPN elicited its experts to unpack the impact of the deal for the Padres and the rest of baseball.

“Machado becomes the face of the franchise and by midseason will likely be teaming with rookie Fernando Tatis Jr. to give the Padres one of the best left sides of the infield in the majors. For a franchise that hasn’t had a winning season since 2010 or made the playoffs since 2006, they finally are moving in the right direction,” said ESPN’s David Schoenfield.

I hadn’t ever placed the words good and San Diego in the same sentence before.  Isn’t that where the Yankees shipped Phil Hughes, Bryan Mitchell and eventually sent back Chase Headley? Yep, that’s the same team.  But the ESPN baseball analysts seemingly are on to something.

“The Padres probably won’t be very good this year, but with the best current farm system in baseball they probably will be quite good in many of the next half-dozen years, and players like Manny Machado aren’t just freely available to pick up when a team decides to flip the switch and compete. They just got an MVP candidate for the middle of the lineup and all it cost them was money,” said ESPN’s Sam Miller.

As far as Machado’s impact on the rest of baseball? Well, he’s out of the American League and the American League East, so that’s good for the Yankees.  Cleveland is jumping for joy because the White Sox didn’t win the free agent over despite inviting a bunch of Machado’s family to the payroll. Byrce Harper is a winner here too because likely he will get what he wants too.

Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred stated in a press conference on Tuesday that this signing is good for baseball.  “I think it’s good in baseball to have big stars present in some of our smaller markets and see those markets really being out there willing to compete for the best talent.” 

As far as the impact on the White Sox, in a word, they feel “defeated.”  “I’m still in a bit of disbelief. (Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf) really, really stepped up. If the acceptance of the offer that I’m seeing is true, then actually our offer had the opportunity for Manny to surpass that. But in the end we went after the guy and we didn’t get him,” said Executive vice president Ken Williams as reported by the Chicago Tribune.  And he added that the similarity of the two teams is clearly evident.  “You’ve got to give it to them. They are in a similar trajectory as we are. And for the same reasons we were after him, they were after him. Their ownership group did a great job in trumping everyone else.”

So, Manny Machado rides into the sunset presumably with his top down on his convertible.  Hey, the weather is great out there, Manny, not like Chicago or Northeast weather, which starts cold and ends up steaming hot in the summer months.  He goes to a small market team with very little post season visits but recall that Dave Winfield was Padre before heading to the Yankees, so maybe he will do well being a big fish in a small pond.  At least he’s out of the Yankees mind and they can get down to the business of winning…something Manny won’t see for sometime.

–Suzie Pinstripe
BYB Managing Editor
Twitter: @suzieprof