Heading to the San Diego Padres after signing a monster contract, Manny Machado has seen his draft stock slide in recent days. Originally a fringe first-round pick with an ADP of 14th, the third baseman has backslid to an ADP of 19th following his mega deal.
Does that feel right, or is there some value here that maybe isn't so obvious?
If park factor is your thing, dinging Machado for his move to the West Coast seems to be a bit silly. Peeking at ESPN's metric from last season, Petco Park ranked 13th in the league in runs created and played fairly neutral in respect to home run factor (0.983). That checks in a lot cleaner than Petco's second-worst park factor rating from 2017.
Projection systems don't seem to predict much of a fall-off, either, for Manny.
| Season | PAs | Runs | HRs | RBIs | AVG | wOBA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 690 | 81 | 33 | 95 | .259 | .328 |
| 2018 | 709 | 84 | 37 | 107 | .297 | .377 |
| THE BAT | 641 | 86 | 34 | 99 | .287 | .369 |
| Steamer | 641 | 88 | 33 | 94 | .279 | .362 |
| numberFire | 658 | 90 | 34 | 99 | .295 | -- |
While leaving a hitter-friendly environment like Camden Yards for Petco Park certainly isn't ideal, it could open up a nice little buy-low window on Machado, one of the game's best bats. With Eric Hosmer, Ian Kinsler, Wil Myers, and Hunter Renfroe already in the fold, a rapidly improving Padres lineup could aid Machado's counting stats, and our models have him 15th in our season-long projections.