Padres: After year of adjustment Manny Machado is set to break out

Reason for hope

So why were those numbers so down for Machado in 2019? Is playing 81 games in Petco really to blame?

The reason for hope is pretty obvious and it’s because he did run into a little bad luck in 2019. His BABIP was .274, which is well below his career average of .298.

Just getting an average year of BABIP would increase his average and OPS numbers to his norms.

One thing that was a bit alarming is that his strikeout percentage jumped to 19.4 percent in 2019, which is the highest total of his career. He needs to get that back down to around 15 percent.

From 2015 to 2018 with Baltimore he averaged a hard-hit percentage of 36 percent with a high of 39.5 percent in 2017 and a low of 33.1 percent in 2015.

With San Diego in 2019 his hard hit percentage was actually well above normal at 43.5 percent.

His pull percentage and opposite field percentage in 2019 was right on par with his career norms, so nothing changed there. The same is true for his groundball, fly ball, and home run/fly ball percentages.

Just looking at the numbers, they suggest Machado just suffered with a little bad luck in 2019 and that he’s not far off from putting up his career norms.