Manny Machado Compared His Brutal Padres Slump to Being Tortured and He Is Not Wrong
Manny Machado is hitting .178. He has 12 home runs through 67 games. His OPS is sitting somewhere between embarrassing and historically bad for a player making $34 million a year.
And when USA Today’s Gabe Lacques asked him how he was processing it, Machado said baseball players love being tortured.
That is the headline. The full quote framed it as part of the rollercoaster, the beauty of the game, the ups and downs that make the sport what it is. Read between the lines, though, and you can tell this is a player who is barely keeping it together at the plate.
This is by far the worst stretch of Machado’s career. He has been an All-Star, an MVP candidate, a perennial 30-homer threat. He signed an 11-year, $350 million extension in 2023 with the expectation that he would be the face of the Padres lineup well into his late thirties. Instead, his power has cratered, his strikeout rate has climbed, and his defense at third has slowly slipped along with everything else.
San Diego manager Mike Shildt has refused to sit him. That is the right move, given the alternatives on the bench, but it also means Padres fans are watching their highest-paid player struggle in real time for 162 games.
What is harder to ignore is how Machado has been handling the moment publicly. He has had multiple tense exchanges with reporters about his struggles. He went on a recent rant about analytics taking the fun out of the game. The torture comment fits that same pattern. It is a player who is trying to laugh it off but is clearly miserable.
The reality is that this might be the new normal for Machado. He is 32 years old, which is the age when most third basemen start to decline. He has a long contract ahead of him. The Padres do not have a real replacement at the position. If he keeps slumping, San Diego is going to be stuck paying a star money for a league-average bat for the next eight years.
That is the actual horror movie for the Padres. Not torture. Decay.
To be fair to Machado, he has bounced back from rough stretches before. Players of his caliber rarely stay this bad for a full season. His swing has shown flashes of life in June, and an underlying batted ball profile suggests he is hitting the ball harder than the surface numbers indicate. There is a path back to being a useful hitter.
But star money buys star expectations. Hitting .240 with 18 home runs would be a fine season for a 32-year-old third baseman making $10 million. It is a disaster for one making $34 million.
The Padres are 36-32 in mid-June and still in playoff contention. That is the only thing keeping the Machado conversation from boiling over completely. If they slip out of the race in July, the noise around him gets louder, and the comparisons to other big-money declines start writing themselves.
Manny Machado called his slump torture. The Padres are about to find out what real pain looks like if he does not figure it out soon.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
