Padres' Manny Machado Changed Offseason Work, Leading to Worst Season

Machado's effort to get better only made him worse.

San Diego Padres third baseman Manny Machado (13) looks on after being called out following an ABS challenge during the fourth inning against the Los Angeles Angels at Angel Stadium on April 17. | William Liang-Imagn Images

Since 2014, his second full season in Major League Baseball, San Diego Padres third baseman Manny Machado has never posted an OPS worse than 10 percent above the league average.

That will change in 2026.

Through the Padres' first 68 games of the season, Machado has a career-low .612 OPS (on-base plus slugging percentage). Only 12 qualified hitters have been worse. To even get back to league-average by the end of the season, Machado would need to hold a .780 OPS the rest of the way, a rate his bat shows no sign of attaining.

Tracing and correcting the root cause of his struggles has been a low-speed pursuit, for Machado and Padre fans alike.

A new report suggests a familiar culprit.

The San Diego Union-Tribune spoke to Machado about the work he did with independent swing coach Richard Schenck last offseason. Kevin Acee reports that "it is, according to several team and league sources either familiar with the work he has done or who have viewed video of his at-bats, the mechanical changes Machado made in the winter that contributed to his being consistently late getting to fastballs."

Schenck has used his Twitter/X account to amass more than 30,000 followers who are treated to an endless stream of videos, swing critiques and biting commentary about the state of coaching at large.

Schenck worked with New York Yankees star Aaron Judge, the three-time American League MVP, early in the slugger's career. Judge's success is the fulcrum on which Schenck's marketing success rests.

Schenck has also worked with Kyren Paris, Scott Kingery, Kole Calhoun and Ian Happ, among others, reflecting a group of major leaguers who have achieved varying degrees of success. That quartet has one All-Star Game appearance among them.

Machado's whiff rate is above the MLB average on fastballs and breaking balls. No Padres hitter (minimum 200 swings) has been late on fastballs more often this season (28%) than Machado, per Statcast.

That figure has gotten lower from April to May to June, so it's possible Machado and the Padres' coaches are undoing some of his bad habits.

“I’m not making excuses about anything,” Machado told Acee. “[Working with Schenck] is not a reason. … There were a lot of great things that came out of that, so it’s not an excuse.”

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