Baseball is always exciting, and there is always something new to discover. Every Friday morning during the season, as we go into the weekend, we bring the Five Fascinations, five interesting things happening in the baseball world, inspired by Zack Lowe’s fantastic “10 Things I Like” NBA column for ESPN. We’d also want to recognize the always-excellent Ben Clemens of FanGraphs, another pioneer of a similar approach. Send your personal fascinations to [email protected], or simply rant at me about mine.
Manny Machado looks like himself again.
Manny Machado stated in April that he did not expect to be entirely healthy until 2025, and the first half of 2024 showed it. Before the break, the perennial MVP candidate had a.422 slugging percentage and did not appear to be himself. The Padres found individuals to fill in, such as Jurickson Profar and Jackson Merrill, but it appears that Machado may have underestimated his healing capacity recently.
Machado has been hitting over the last month.324 with nine home runs and 26 RBIs, and he (along with Merrill, Blake Snell, and others) has the Padres as the hottest club in baseball, posting a 20-8 record in that span. Machado continues to improve at the plate, hitting an incredible moonshot of a home run against the Cardinals on Tuesday, and is rounding into MVP form just when the Padres need him the most. It’s amazing to see, not just because Machado is entertaining to watch, but also because he’s at a crossroads in his career where he needs to start putting up his Hall of Fame stats.
Our Mike Petriello, in his annual “how many Hall of Famers are currently playing?” column, put Machado on his “has some, but not a lot, work left to do” tier, and you were concerned that he was falling behind after his first half. He looks more like himself now… It appears that he is going to cause some October damage.
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