Signing Manny Machado for $300 million was one of the smartest ideas the Padres ever had.

Manny Machado is no longer a free agent having signed a 10-year, $300-million contract with the San Diego Padres–the fourth largest contract ever signed in baseball history after Mike Trout resigning with the Los Angeles Angels for $430, Bryce Harper’s signing with the Phillie’s for $330 million and Giancarlo Stanton’s signing for $325 million back when he played with the Marlins. The question is, will this contract be worth it for the Padres?

Yes. Yes, it will.

It was a great idea for the Padres to pick up Machado. Picking up this great defensive 3rd baseman/shortstop and talented offensive player is not only going to help the Padres make it further in the long run but with his stats and at his young age of 26 years old, there’s a lot of career ahead of him.  Machado can also improve by starting to hustle and hit balls out a bit more, since he currently tends to be quite lazy. One example of that was during the 2018 World Series. The Dodger were down two games and Machado hits what he thought was going to be a home run so he starts walking with the bat. The ball hit the wall and he ended up with a single–but I’m sure the Padres took that into consideration. Overall, Machado is a great player.

Machado’s quite the character and he really just loves entertaining the crowd. He loves trash talking and picking fights with people to get the crowd going. To get in these fights sometimes he pulls some quite dirty moves. In game 4 of that same World Series Machado spiked Red Sox first baseman Steven Pierce. Machado later claimed the incident was an accident but no one believes that since it wasn’t the first time he’d done it in his MLB career. The Padres are a pretty unpopular team and Machado will definitely help that out with his humorous, if occasionally controversial, personality and large fan base. Ticket sales will be most definitely be going up.

AJ Cassavell, writing for MLB News says that San Diego Padres are probably a year away from being a top contending team. His addition “might change the weakness of the starting rotation… what used to be the Padres least efficient position is now going to be their strongest position.”  But that assessment is too modest. Machado will be a huge help to the team. The Padres in fact have a decently strong starting rotation and Machado’s only going to make it better.

$300 million is a lot of money but this will help the Padres out long term. Machado’s outstanding skill in baseball and humorous but short tempered-personality will definitely help the Padres’ popularity and stats grow over the 10 years they have him for.