It appears unlikely that the San Diego Padres will part ways with future Hall of Famer Manny Machado with seven years left of his 11-year, $350 million deal.
Bfore new owners Kwanza Jones and Jose E. Feliciano took over, there was chatter that the Padres were looking to shed payroll. With Machado set to make more than $39 million per season until the end of the 2033 campaign, rumors started to take shape.
At the All-Star break, the Padres sat at a .500 record, the new ownership was still not finalized and Machado owned a .203 batting average. The mammoth contracts that he, Fernando Tatis Jr., Xander Bogaerts and Jackson Merrill have (they will all be paid about $200 million through at least 2034), started to be called into question.
As Padres fans know more than anyone in baseball, San Diego turned things around in the second half of the season, going 43-23. Machado saw an increase in his batting average and OPS, Tatis finished with an unprecedented increase in his slugging percentage and OPS, and even Bogaerts had an uptick in each major hitting figure.
For Machado specifically, the San Diego Union-Tribune's Kevin Acee recently reported how unlikely it is that he would be dealt anywhere. Between a no-trade clause, the possibility of San Diego still having to take on a majority of his deal if there was a trade, and most importantly, the production Machado is still displaying, don't expect him to be wearing a different uniform any time soon.
"[The possibility of moving a larger contract] has never been an immediate priority, and it might not be now," Acee wrote. "For one thing, the new owners have not weighed in on a budget or signaled their appetite for eating a lot of money or jettisoning a star player (especially one who literally and symbolically changed the franchise).
"Moving Machado seems highly unlikely, though talking about every possibility to make the Padres better is what Preller and his lieutenants do just about every waking hour of just about every day of the year."
The Padres have quite a few contracts to sift through this offseason, and it just so happens to be an offseason that appears to be met with a lockout ahead of the 2027 campaign.
In order to shed payroll, expect the Friars to go for peripheral pieces and make the difficult moves in free agency, rather than part ways with those that have been integral to their success.
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