ANAHEIM, Calif. — A habitual in-game gum chewer, Manny Machado blew a bubble as he hustled to first base. It was the top of the fourth inning at Angel Stadium, where the San Diego Padres were well into an uninspiring performance. Then Machado reached the bag, preventing a potential double play but paying a price. He stopped in shallow right field and bent over in pain. The bubble had burst.
The Padres went on to absorb insult on top of injury Wednesday night. They lost 3-2 to hand a series sweep to a Los Angeles Angels team that, before Tuesday, hadn’t won consecutive home games all season. And less than a week after the Padres put Joe Musgrove and Yu Darvish on the shelf, they lost their franchise third baseman to a leg injury.
It remains to be seen if Machado will join the two pitchers and fellow star infielder Xander Bogaerts on the injured list. Machado is day to day with what the Padres believe is a mild strain of his right upper hip flexor. He briefly lobbied to stay in Wednesday’s game before being persuaded by manager Mike Shildt and head athletic trainer Mark Rogow to exit it.
“I was ready to continue and push through it,” Machado said, “but they made the executive decision to kind of be smart and get ahead of it, not make it worse.”
Here is the moment Manny Machado appeared to hurt himself running down the first base line
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Against an Angels franchise that has been debilitated by top-heavy rosters, San Diego played the rest of the way with more than $800 million in contracts on the sidelines. It was just two springs ago that the Padres pictured a long run of star-fueled contention when they extended Machado with the largest deal in franchise history. Now, their 2024 season feels more than a little precarious for a team with the fifth-best record in a mediocre National League.
The Padres (32-33) have won eight of their past 11 series while winning just 18 of 34 games and being swept by two of the majors’ worst clubs. They have been hurt by injuries to Bogaerts (shoulder fracture), Musgrove (elbow inflammation) and Darvish (groin strain), but they also have hurt themselves.
Tuesday, for the first time ever, the Padres lost a third straight game in which their starter went at least six innings and allowed no more than one run. Wednesday, in the top of the first, they continued a frustrating pattern of overaggressive base running when Luis Arraez was easily thrown out going first to third. Machado grounded into a double play moments later to end a two-hit, five-pitch inning for Angels starter José Soriano.
Three innings after that, Machado beat a throw to first but hurt himself in the process. The Padres can ill afford to lose him for even a few games. Arraez, who is leading the majors in batting average, is playing with a sore right shoulder. Machado, 31 and playing with a surgically repaired elbow, is off to one of the worst starts of his career but had begun to come around, hitting .344 over his previous 17 games.
“It’s rough,” right fielder Fernando Tatis Jr. said. “We already have a big blow with Xander, so I don’t want to imagine also Manny being out.”
Between Monday and Tuesday, Machado and Tatis combined to go 7-for-14 with Machado’s first home run in a month. Their teammates, meanwhile, went 6-for-51 against a pitching staff that began the week with the majors’ third-worst ERA. In the series finale, Tatis notched his first four-hit game since 2021 while Arraez managed a single and a double. The rest of the offense went 2-for-25 with one walk.
Afterward, Padres right-hander Dylan Cease said he felt he “kind of gave the game away early.” Cease, who gave up a home run in the first and another in the second, still finished with a quality start. It was not enough to keep San Diego from wasting a fourth consecutive game of strong pitching.
“Clearly, we’ve got the team to beat anybody,” Shildt said after the Padres fell to 15-20 against teams currently below .500. “But we didn’t show up and play well against this club, and to their credit … they executed the whole series and they played good baseball.”
The Padres are far from the only team that has struggled to sustain good baseball. It is June 5, and four National League clubs are above .500. Only one front office, however, has made multiple major acquisitions in the last three months.
To the credit of San Diego general manager A.J. Preller, both have resulted in positive early returns. Arraez is hitting .381 in 28 games. Cease has been merely solid since a roaring start but still has a 3.51 ERA. Without either player, the Padres might already be buried in a muddy wild-card race, not very much alive in it. And, as The Athletic reported this week, Preller has eyed the possibility of reuniting Cease with former Chicago White Sox teammate Garret Crochet.
At the same time, that the Padres have a sub-.500 record with Cease and Arraez producing could be interpreted as a stop sign or, at least, a yellow light. San Diego’s farm system is not nearly as deep as it was a few months ago. It remains to be seen if ownership will grant Preller much more flexibility before the July 30 trade deadline.
Meanwhile, there is real concern about two cornerstones of the starting rotation. Darvish has been playing catch and could return later this month. Musgrove, however, is not expected to resume throwing for at least another couple of weeks. The Padres were encouraged Tuesday when Adam Mazur, 23, worked around four walks in his major-league debut to supply six innings of one-run ball.
A night later, there were fewer positives to glean from another upset. Cease lamented not finding his rhythm until it was too late. Tatis noted that he felt the team had let the sting of Sunday’s come-from-ahead loss in Kansas City trail it into Anaheim.
“We need to find a way how to separate it and just go out there and just try to beat whoever is out there,” Tatis said.
Machado, for his part, acknowledged that being swept was “a blow.” He expressed hope he would not miss much time, if any.
“I’m gonna do everything I can tonight to recover and try to speed this process up,” Machado said. “But yeah, we’ll see. We’ll see tomorrow.”
Thursday at Petco Park, the Padres will face another would-be contender. The Arizona Diamondbacks are 29-33 but just 1 1/2 games back of a wild-card spot. A four-game series between two sub-.500 teams in early June has rarely felt so important.
“We’re all gonna have to step up,” Machado said. “This team has been built around that, and we were talking about it in spring training: It’s gonna take a lot of us to carry (us), and there’s gonna be a lot of times like this that guys are gonna be getting hurt.
“It’s gonna take all of us, especially now. It’s the tough part of the season. So, we just got to keep going and keep pulling. This is gonna make us stronger as a team one day.”
(Photo of Manny Machado leaving the game Wednesday with an injury: Jayne Kamin-Oncea / USA Today)
