But that was the vibe as he calmly discussed his mostly awful first 6\u00bd\u00a0 weeks of the 2026 season.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m five hits away from hitting .240,\u201d he said on Friday afternoon, his math off slightly but not enough to quibble about. \u201cI\u2019m not worried. \u2026 Still 500 at-bats left. A lot of baseball.\u201d<\/p>\n
After going 0-for-7 in the first two games of the Padres\u2019 series against the Mariners, Machado is batting .182 with a .604 OPS.<\/p>\n
Both numbers are the lowest in his career (by a lot) through 43 games.<\/p>\n
\u201cI guess I\u2019m lucky it took me 15 years,\u201d he said. \u201cI guess I\u2019m a lucky man.\u201d<\/p>\n
Machado repeated one mantra multiple times on Friday.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re winning ballgames,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s most important.\u201d<\/p>\n
Indeed. The Padres\u2019 7-4 victory over the Mariners on Saturday improved them to 27-18.<\/p>\n
That is also a development as fascinating as it is both encouraging and worrisome.<\/p>\n
Machado changed the Padres into winners when he arrived in 2019, and during the first five years of their renaissance, his performance determined far more than any other player how often they won. But he is not necessarily a bellwether anymore.<\/p>\n
From 2020 through \u201824, they were 99-19 when he drove in at least two runs, 114-50 when he had multiple hits and 84-32 when he homered.<\/p>\n
That the Padres went as Machado went was less of a rule last season, as they were 17-6 when he had at least two RBIs, 32-15 when he had multiple hits and 17-10 when he homered in 2025.<\/p>\n
This year, he has been a significant part of some victories. Just not as many. The Padres are 3-1 when Machado has multiple RBIs, 5-1 when he has multiple hits and 4-1 when he homers.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s never easy to suck,\u201d he said \u201cBut we\u2019re winning ballgames, which is most important. At the end of the day, it\u2019s about what the team needs. Right now, that\u2019s what the team is doing. We\u2019re winning ballgames. I will keep working on trying to get hits.\u201d<\/p>\n
As he spoke, he leaned back inside his locker and slipped on fluorescent green batting gloves. He would a few minutes later begin a long session in the batting cage with hitting coach Steven Souza Jr. watching him work.<\/p>\n
As Machado noted, he likely does have about 500 at-bats remaining in his 15th MLB season.<\/p>\n
There is in that sentence a lot to think about regarding the past and the future for the player who turns 34 in early July.<\/p>\n
This is not the first time he has been struggling this far into a season. This is not the first time he has been failing to do damage on fat pitches far more often than he should or usually does. This is not the first time we have wondered if age has begun its final assault on his sweet swing.<\/p>\n
And then he proves he is still the Manny.<\/p>\n
Fact is, numbers that have him on track for eventual Hall of Fame enshrinement have been amassed over a career full of streaks.![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/MMcareer.png\")
<\/p>\n
He has been close to this bad at this point in previous seasons. He has gone deeper into seasons in funks.<\/p>\n
Yet he has never finished a full season with an OPS lower than .739 or a batting average lower than .256. He has hit at least 27 home runs in 10 consecutive seasons (excepting the covid-shortened 202 campaign). He has been, at the end of all but one of the past six seasons at least 22% better offensively than the average MLB player, according to the metric wRC+.<\/p>\n
\u201cListen man, it\u2019s a little bit of unlucky, there\u2019s a little bit of, you know, (mechanical) stuff going on,\u201d Machado said. \u201cJust a little bit of everything, I mean, it\u2019s baseball. We\u2019ve been facing some really good pitchers, and it\u2019s kind of tough to get yourself into the rhythm. But hey, I\u2019ve seen it for a long time. It isn\u2019t going to sustain. You\u2019re going to get out of things.\u201d<\/p>\n
To be clear, Machado is not the only Padres star not hitting.<\/p>\n
Fernando Tatis Jr. is homerless and appears to be going backward in his approach. Jackson Merrill has two hits in his past 30 at-bats and is another 0-for-5 day from joining Machado below .200.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to hit,\u201d Machado said. \u201cI have no worries that we\u2019re not going to hit. We\u2019re great hitters. We\u2019re up here for a reason. We are who we are for a reason. It\u2019s just a matter of time for us to break out again and to get rolling, and it\u2019s going to be fun when we do it. It\u2019s going to be even better. It\u2019s been amazing to be a part of this so far, and where we are right now, and we really haven\u2019t been contributing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Without hesitation, he then transferred the assessment to one Padres star in particular.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo when I do,\u201d he said, \u201cit\u2019s gonna be just that much better.\u201d<\/p>\n
Machado has a history, too, of bursting out of extended slumps after talking about them publicly.<\/p>\n
On Saturday evening, after drawing his first walk in eight games and making one of his outs on a 109 mph line drive, Machado passed a reporter in the clubhouse, the same one who had questioned him the day before.<\/p>\n
He turned back, grinned and said, \u201cIt\u2019s coming.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SEATTLE \u2014 He never came close to being defensive or annoyed. He never referred to the back of…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":802130,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5134],"tags":[5229,1582,276,1370,1266,3549,1306,7264,62,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-802129","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-latest-headlines","12":"tag-mlb","13":"tag-san-diego","14":"tag-san-diego-padres","15":"tag-sandiego","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-united-states","18":"tag-united-states-of-america","19":"tag-unitedstates","20":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","21":"tag-us","22":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116588115898422519","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=802129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802129\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/802130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=802129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=802129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=802129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}