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

The 2019 season was certainly a big adjustment for Manny  Machado with the San Diego Padres, but he could be ready to break out in 2020.

When the San Diego Padres signed Manny Machado to a 10 year, $300 million contract last offseason it was supposed to signal the beginning of a new era.

They had their superstar to anchor the lineup and they had their rising superstar to pair with him in Fernando Tatis Jr.

And for the first half of 2019 we saw glimpses of that as San Diego hovered around .500 and remained in the Wild Card race.

But with Tatis missing most of the second-half of 2019 and Machado struggling down the stretch, the Padres season fell apart and now we enter 2020 still waiting to see them turn things around.

And it all really starts with these two superstars, but more specifically I want to focus on Machado.

Over six-and-a-half years playing in a hitter’s friendly ballpark in Baltimore, Machado hit .283/.335 with 162 home runs and an OPS of .822 in 860 games.

From 2015-2018 he averaged 35.5 home runs a year and hit a home run every 17.6 at-bats. Since coming over to the National League that has dropped a little to every 19 at-bats, but that’s nothing too alarming and is expected playing in much more pitcher-friendly parks.

The biggest issue since coming over to the National League has been his average as he’s hit .261 in 854 at-bats with the Dodgers and Padres.

Let’s take a look at the numbers, why they were down in 2019, and whether or not Machado can turn things around in San Diego.

A look at the averages

Some people in today’s game don’t put a lot of stock in batting average, but don’t count me in that group. If you can hit, your average is going to be good, that’s never changed.

In 2019 Machado put up the lowest batting average of his career hitting .256 with the Padres. It was only the second time since his rookie season in which he had a batting average under .275.

He’s never been a .300 hitter, but I think most expect him to hit between .275-.290 every year.

His OBP of .334 in 2019 is right on mark with his career norms and that’s about where I expect him to be with San Diego — somewhere between .330-.350.

It was only the second time since 2014 that he finished the year with an OPS under .800; although he was really close at .796.

For what San Diego is paying him, I think it’s reasonable to expect him to at least have an .800 OPS every year (at least through his prime years) and probably fall somewhere in the .850-.900 range.

His 108 wRC+ in 2019 was much lower than the 127 wRC+ that he averaged from 2015-2018, so it’s safe to expect that to be much higher going forward.

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.