San Diego, CA
Manny Machado healthy, happy to be chasing history with Padres
PEORIA, Ariz. — Manny Machado is happy to say he is healthy for the first time in a while, which the Padres believe will mean the same good things it has in the past.
And Machado is not shying away from the reality of the path he has ahead of him, one that might lead to immortality.
“We all play for that,” he said recently. “We play to win, but I’m also putting myself in a good spot to be mentioned to possibly be a Hall of Famer. I mean, it’s an honor to even get in that conversation. Putting up those numbers, seeing those numbers, they just keep creeping up.”
Machado is at 1,900 career hits and is eight home runs away from 350 in his career. Just 297 major leaguers have ever had 2,000 hits. Just 77 have had 2,000 hits and 350 homers.
He turns 33 in July and has eight years remaining on his contract. It is likely he has time to blow past 2,500 and 400 (29 players), and it is not unfathomable he could reach 2,750 and 450 (16 players). With some good fortune, he could fend off Father Time long enough to reach 3,000 and 500 (seven players).
“Yeah,” he said with obvious appreciation of the exclusivity of the company he is on the precipice of keeping, “that list gets shorter.”
There were questions over the past two seasons whether Machado could regain his footing along the road to Cooperstown. Probably, for some, questions remain.
Perhaps that is because there is a lack of understanding what he has done in those two years.
“Thinking about how bad he was for a stretch of time last year, and he still ends up with 30 homers and 100-plus RBIs,” Padres pitcher Joe Musgrove said Saturday. “You almost don’t even — like at the end of the year, you look at the numbers and you’re like, ‘How the (expletive) did that happen?’ He always finds a way to produce.”
It has been quite a couple seasons for Machado. Just a grindy, painful slog.
Really, it has been the better part of three seasons, in that his right elbow pain began in 2022 and he played through a severe ankle injury that summer.
He did not take batting practice much in 2023, and je ended that season and began ‘24 as the Padres’ designated hitter.
Following surgery in October ‘23 to repair his extensor tendon, Machado did not swing a bat until a month before spring training last year and was still experiencing pain to varying degrees each day well into the season. He said the elbow was never 100% until some point this past winter.
So, a healthy Machado in 2025 means we should expect, well, not a whole lot different.
Because he has, remarkably, been pretty much the same as ever.
In the end, Machado produced at far closer to the same level he always has than should have reasonably been expected.
In word and deed, Manny was Manny.
Just playing baseball. He says that phrase all the time. He also refers often to something being part of the “beauty of the game,” and he finds that beauty even in the parts that hurt.
“I’m just so used to it, honestly,” he said when asked to look back at what he endured the past two-plus seasons. “I’m just so used to it. You gotta figure it out, man. You know, I’ve figured things out my entire life, and, you know, since I was a kid, you have to figure it out. I want to be a baseball player, so go figure it out. You know, ‘What are you gonna do to become one?’ And it’s just got (ingrained) in me, man. I just figure it out. Go out there and figure it out, whatever you need to do to go out there and play.”
He spoke of Buck Showalter, his manager in Baltimore, and players like Adam Jones and Nick Markakis and J.J. Hardy, guys who would rub a little dirt on it.
“They’re out there grinding it out,” he said. “And you’re 22 years old, and you’re just like, ‘I gotta go out there and do it, right?’ So it just got (ingrained) in me where it was just like, ‘Just figure it out.’”
This is the guy who played more games from 2015 through 2022 than any other major league player, refusing to go on the injured list even in ‘22 with a Grade 3 (as bad as it gets) ankle sprain in 2022.
So it should be stressed that he played in 290 games between 2023 and ‘24 rather than that he missed 34.
“It’s been the entire time I’ve played with him,” said Jake Cronenworth, who made his major league debut for the Padres in 2020. “It’s very impressive, the level that he still performs at whatever he’s going through and doing what he does on the field. It sets a standard for the group. Me as a young guy on the team, seeing him hurt playing through stuff, I’m like, ‘Well, if something happens to me, I can’t just go down.’ He helps set a standard for what our group is.”
And while Machado has received plenty of praise, along with myriad questions about whether he would ever be the same during the past two seasons, maybe it has been at least a little overlooked that he was as good as he was.
His numbers were down.
His .790 OPS and 118 wRC+ over the past two seasons were the lowest of any two-year span since 2015-16, when Machado really began to emerge as one of the best and most consistent players in the game.
He still hit 30 home runs in 2023 and 29 in ‘24 and is the only player in the major leagues to have hit at least 28 home runs in nine consecutive full seasons (excluding the COVID-shortened 2020 campaign).
He still carried the Padres for periods, such as when he batted .301 with a .920 OPS from June 18 through the Sept. 24 game in which he started a ninth-inning triple play that ended the victory that clinched the Padres’ postseason spot. Machado’s OPS tied Jackson Merrill for the highest on the team in that span, his 23 home runs were tied for fifth most in the major leagues and his 71 RBIs were fourth most.
He still had 28 games with multiple RBIs last season, and the Padres were an astounding 27-1 in those games. He still led the Naitonal League with 28 go-ahead RBIs.
And that was after the worst 69-game start of his career, in which he batted .245 with a .662 OPS while pretty much just figuring out how to swing.
“He was trying to really feel where he can put the elbow so it would be a comfortable swing,” hitting coach Victor Rodriguez said. “He did a great job hanging in there when he really didn’t feel good. … He was trying to find a comfortable way to do it because he was in pain. He tweaked here and there to find it and get comfortable, and in the second half he was impressive.”
Machado’s work this offseason has involved incorporating and returning.
Machado said he learned a lot from some of the limitations he had last season when he was forced to rely more on flexibility work in the offseason and throughout the year. This winter he got back to working with weights — hang cleans and squats, plus strengthening his chest and grip. Bulking up and increasing strength not only helps with power but with maintaining at the end of a long season.
He will blend that with the flexibility work – wall sits, planks, various things to activate his muscles and keep his lower legs healthy.
“I just feel like that stuff kind of helped me maintain my flexibility a lot throughout the year,” he said. “It helped me with the little muscles. There’s a lot of things that like during the year, you kind of forget about the little muscles. … I kind of started overseeing all the other stuff that kind of plays a bigger part in keeping your strength and keeping your elasticity going where it needs to be, to be firing every single day. You kind of lose that throughout the year.”
And this spring has been the ongoing work of refining his swing, trying to get it back to the fluid plane and swing path that allowed him to spray line drives to all fields with a motion that was both violent and effortless.
“I was around the ball last year a lot more than I was in the past just because I couldn’t really get into my slot with my (back) elbow and kind of keep it tight to my body,” he said. “Everything just started looking more round. So I kind of have to use a little bit more of my legs last year, more than I’ve had in the past. But yeah, hopefully this year, I can keep it.”
If he can do so, the year should involve some history.
It has been six years since Machado signed what was at the time the largest contract in North American sports history (10 years, $350 million) to play for the Padres. He is now in the third seaso of an 11-year, $350 million extension.
His initial signing and the way he has played — third in MVP voting in 2020, second in ‘22 — have played arguably the single-biggest role in transforming the franchise.
And now he is on the verge of having spent more time with the Padres than his original team. He is 52 games from passing his total (860) with the Orioles, the team that drafted him and with whom he played in the major leagues from 2012 until he was traded to the Dodgers in the middle of 2018.
“It’s crazy,” Machado said of how long he been with the Padres. “I think about that all the time.”
Machado became the franchise’s home run leader last season. Well before the All-Star break, he will likely trail only Tony Gwynn and Dave Winfield in runs, total bases and RBIs in Padres history. If he remains healthy, he will be in the top five in games played by season’s end.
And sometime before summer he will likely reach 350 hits and before it is over should get to 2,000 hits.
“I see that number, and I’m like, ‘Damn,’” Machado said. “I remember my first hit. And now you’re chasing down 2,000. You’re 100 away. I mean, that’s mind blowing. It’s surreal.”
San Diego, CA
The gun violence that has taken place in the last two days is prompting San Diego community members to take action.
As local members of the Jewish community celebrated the first day of Hanukkah, they joined in solidarity with those impacted by the tragedy in Australia.
Meanwhile, other members of the community honored the lives lost to gun violence.
Despite the somber and tragic events that have unfolded in the last two days, the community is holding strong.
San Diegans are choosing to focus on the light rather than the darkness.
“Our job is not just to spread light with words, but with actions,” Rabbi Yossi Tiefenbrun, Director of Chabad of Pacific Beach said.
As members of the Jewish community gathered at Liberty Station Sunday night to kick off the first day of Hannukah by the lighting of the menorah, their hearts are with their brothers and sisters in Bondi, Australia, where two attackers killed at least 15 people in a shooting during the Jewish holiday celebration.
“Personally, it’s been a very difficult day. The Rabbi in the city of Australia was a classmate of mine. We grew up together in London, England. So waking up to that kind of news was devastating,” Rabbi Yossi Tiefenbrun said.
The tragedy in Australia comes just hours after a gunman opened fire at Brown University, killing two and injuring at least nine others.
“For every shooting, for every death, there’s a family behind that. There are friends, there are loved ones,” Carol Landale said.
Sunday also marks 13 years since a gunman opened fire at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newton, Connecticut, killing 20-first graders and 6 staff members.
“When will this stop… When will the powers of this world say enough?” Rev. Penny Bridges, Dean, St. Paul Cathedral said.
The annual vigil of remembrance for the victims of gun violence was held Sunday night at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church.
“In this festive time of advent and festive season of Hanukkah, we call on our loving and living God to bring peace to our world, to end the evil of Gun violence,” Rev. Penny Bridges said.
With violence erupting on the first day of Hanukkah, the head of security for the Jewish Federation said they are working with other law enforcement agencies to ensure the safety of everyone in the community.
“I think it’s important for everyone to know that there are no articulated threats in our area we just have to be situationally aware,” Bill Ganley, Community Security Director for the Jewish Federation said.
San Diegans are standing strong in solidarity for one another, hoping for a brighter future ahead.
“We will fight with light whenever there is darkness,” Michael Sclar, who attended the menorah lighting said.
In a statement to NBC 7, The American Jewish Committee of San Diego said in part, “Sadly, this is not an isolated incident, and while we are horrified and devastated, we are not surprised…Hanukkah is time for joy and light and this year, we hope others will join us as we light our candles in solidarity with the Australian Jewish community. Because antisemitism is a threat to all of society and if we fail to push back against this evil hatred, everyone is at risk.
PACIFIC BEACH (CNS) – Two San Diego police officers who were on foot in a Pacific Beach intersection were struck tonight by a car operated by a wrong-way driver who was believed intoxicated.
The crash occurred at 8:25 p.m. Saturday in the intersection of Thomas Avenue and Mission Boulevard, San Diego Police Department Officer Anthony Carrosco told City News Service.
The suspect’s Honda Civic was eastbound in westbound lanes when it struck the on-duty officers, Carrosco said. It was unclear what the officers were doing in the roadway.
One officer suffered non-life-threatening injuries and was taken by ambulance to a trauma center, he said. The other officer was not injured.
The man driving the Honda was arrested for suspicion of felony DUI, Carrosco said. The man’s name and age were not immediately released.
The intersection was closed for the investigation, he said.
Copyright 2025, City News Service, Inc.
Sez Me …
We should have known better. I’m an idiot for not guessing that making sense out of the College Football Playoffs would be about as pleasurable as getting a colonoscopy with a rusted rake left out in the snow.
As far back as I can remember — and those of us over 50 know this Unsocial Media’s Generation’s memory goes back a week — I’ve been shouting from the rooftops that we must have a college football playoff.
(Although I will admit to not spending much time on rooftops lately, now that TV antennas have gone the way of the carburetor.)
A four-team tournament was a good start, but obviously not large enough. When it went to 12, it appeared to be the ideal number. Those who bitched over not making the final four now were going to get a chance to prove themselves on the field of play.
The big deal today is Notre Dame being left out of the top 12, with James Madison and Tulane getting in because the system allows conference champions. Notre Dame is independent, thus no conference — in football only.
This is a real shame.
As you know, I’m no fan of the Irish. Up to this minute, they’ve been privileged beyond belief. Both ND and Miami finished with 10-2 records, but the Irish lost to the Hurricanes in the opener, and by the time the selection committee made its final list, it took head-to-head into account. Which is the way it should be, when both teams finish with the same records.
Pouting Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua, whose school has chosen not to appear in a menial (for them) bowl game, says few schools ever have had a more successful run than ND.
The programs the Irish beat in that 10-game span had an overall record of 55-65. Historic.
Despite all that, ND was one of the few teams that seemed capable of winning the national title. It certainly belonged in over Alabama, but the SEC has special powers.
The Irish will be in it soon enough. I suspect the tournament will balloon to 16 teams. The problem now is that with NIL and rampant portal transferring, we have parity as we’ve never had it before. And that’s not a good thing. It will be much harder for the James Madisons of the world to make it.
But this isn’t basketball. It doesn’t deserve to be in.
The Dukes lost 28-14 to Louisville, their only power conference opponent (and not a good one). And they’re a three-touchdown underdog to Oregon in the tournament. Notre Dame and Oregon would be close.
But that’s just too damn bad. …
Indiana’s Curt Cignetti is the most dour head football coach at any level I’ve seen. You can sit this guy down in front of “Blazing Saddles” and he’s watching “Camille.” …
Curt isn’t winning the national title, but he’s done a helluva job at Bob Knight’s school. Come to think of it, he’s Bob without the chair. …
The Eagles’ Nick Sirianni, who is leaning at the tape as the worst head coach to win a Super Bowl, worked all week with the Philly offense. Jalen Hurts had a 31.2 passer rating vs. the NFL Team That Used To Be Here on Monday night. Smokey Gaines, where are you? That’s 31.2 more than a dead man. …
Daiyan Henley tackling Tony Jefferson after his overtime pick vs. the Eagles was wise. But because it was OT, even if Jefferson had fumbled it away and Philly recovered, the game would have been over. No extra possessions allowed in OT. …
Philip Rivers, 44, who last played football in 2020, should stay as far away from the NFL as humanly possible, perhaps have another child. Alas, he can’t help himself. …
Philip has been signed by the Colts, moving his Hall of Fame eligibility up five more years — which could mean a few more kids. …
But he’s going to play. Probably Sunday. You know that. …
In fact, I’m certain Philip eventually will become the first great-grandfather to play in The League. …
Philip has to be in better shape than Justin Herbert, no? …
Jim Harbaugh is right. Herbert is a superhero. …
Patrick Mahomes is a great quarterback. But he is a lousy quarterback under pressure. Always has been. Except there’s more pressure now. Still, if the Judases give him time to throw Sunday, adios J’s. …
With that offensive line protecting Herbert the way Sarajevo cops guarded Archduke Franz Ferdinand, it remains a wonder the Judases can win a game. But it’s December, when defense matters. …
Told you. Joe Burrow is Andrew Luck waiting to happen. …
The only games the NFL should play on Christmas Day are the ones the athletes and coaches bought for the kids to open. …
Todd Bowles, we know you can cuss. Try coaching better before driving the bus over your players. …
Bill Johnston, for 39 years publicist for the NFL Team That Used To Be Here, and serving for the last nine with the Padres, is retiring. He learned from the best, Rick Smith, a bulldog, and Bill had that attitude as he battled relentlessly beside wife Ramona through her two-decade battle with Huntington’s Disease. One of the finest men I’ve known. …
Sherrone Moore has been fired as Michigan’s football coach because of an inappropriate relationship with a staff member. Sherrone then lost it and got thrown in stir for stalking and home invasion. Lane Kiffin still has time to change his mind and go to Ann Arbor. …
The Michigan job is near the top. Great history. Unlimited resources. …
USC’s Makai Lemon was the best receiver I saw all year. So he won the Biletnikoff Award. Amazing. Others agreed with me. …
The Padres have signed reliever Daison Acosta. Now there’s one with some teeth. …
The Padres and Diamondbacks will meet in Mexico City April 25 and 26? Why? Plenty of Mexican food here, and Richardson’s in Phoenix is the best Mexican in America. OK, international games are stupid. …
Now in his second year in the Fox booth, Tom Brady is getting better as he tries to earn all of that 10-year, $375 million salary. It’s what happens when Bill Belichick tells him what to say. …
Happens every week. During Steelers-Ravens, the officials screwed the Ravens into Fort McHenry. …
Officials finally got something right. They called 19 accepted penalties on the pathetic Falcons Thursday night vs. the Bucs. Atlanta still won. …
Hey, Bicycle Mayor and His Ham & Eggers: Have you taken a ride south on Kettner toward the I-5 South onramp, featuring the Rick Schloss bump? Hope you have four-wheel drive. What a disgrace. Welcome to San Diego, rental car users. …
Jeff Kent was a good baseball player. I never considered him a Hall of Famer. Still don’t. …
Army-Navy. Fastest game. As though Randy Jones were pitching. …
I was at the 1990 World Cup in Italy, which, I believe, makes me eligible for the FIFA Peace Prize. …
How can whistles be that clean?
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