Stay or Go: Manny Machado

One of the talkers of the offseason for Baltimore Orioles fans is what to do with Manny Machado. In a perfect world, Machado would be an O for life. It’s not often that a player like Machado comes along, holding his own for three years before breaking out in a big way — at age 22. After an injury waylaid his 2014 season, he’s bounced back and proven durable with back-to-back seasons of at least 155 games played.

He’s moved positions to accommodate teammates. He’s been part of a winning atmosphere in Baltimore. He’s a great defender, a great competitor and most importantly of all, a tremendous hitter. He’ll spend a large chunk of next season at the tender age of 24. He’s coming off back-to-back 30 home run seasons, and he’s proven there isn’t much on the baseball field that he can’t do. He swiped 20 bags in 2015. Strangely, he didn’t steal any in 2016.

(Weigh in with your opinion on the BSL boards here.)

But you get the point. His similarity scores are off the charts for comps on Baseball Reference. Through his age-23 season, Machado has comps to Hall of Famers Bobby Doerr and Ron Santo. Also on his list are Andruw Jones, Justin Upton and Bryce Harper, all of whom are/were on a Hall of Fame path at that point in their careers. The rest of the list isn’t too shabby, either. I mean, if you’re into Adrian Beltre, Ruben Sierra, Cesar Cedeno and Ken Keltner.

In fact, Machado’s top comp for each of his big-league seasons is Beltre, which would be a fairly strong end result career-wise. Beltre is a silky-smooth defender, and despite a dip in production after a fast start has churned out 19 years in a remarkable MLB career. It would be great for that to be the path for Machado to follow.

But there’s the issue. Players who debut early — Beltre was just a shade over 19, Machado almost a full year older — also hit free agency earlier. Part of making the big leagues early is just that they’re, frankly, that much more talented than their similarly-aged counterparts. That they stay in the big leagues long enough to hit free agency typically means they’re capable of adjusting, and by 25-26 years old, they’re ready to hit free agency.

Since they’ve proven capable of making adjustments, they’re typically really, really great players. The original Alex Rodriguez mega-deal with the Texas Rangers comes to mind. Or perhaps more recently, the Jason Heyward contract with the Chicago Cubs. Beltre had a walk year for the ages in 2004, blasting 48 home runs with a 1.017 OPS — both numbers he’s never come close to since — for the Dodgers before bolting for Seattle that offseason.

That’s not to say that the Orioles should necessarily fear that happening, with Machado controlled for just two more years before he’s free agency eligible at age 26, but it serves as a cautionary tale. If the Orioles would like to keep Machado, it’s going to take a significant financial investment. Shock of the year, right? But we aren’t talking Chris Davis kind of money here; we’re almost certainly talking about $200-plus million — hell, you can’t rule out $300 million, can you? — with all the bells and whistles of the modern superstar contract.

That probably means including opt outs.

One need not look far back to see that’s not really the way the Orioles operate. “There was not an agreement to terms because they kept insisting on an opt-out,” team executive vice president Dan Duquette told Baltimore media last February regarding the fallout from the Dexter Fowler debacle. “I don’t and club ownership doesn’t see the value of that type of arrangement to the Orioles. If we’re going to guarantee a contract, then it should be a contract.”  

Now the situations certainly aren’t analogous. Teams are often willing to stretch their budget and their scruples for the evils they know. That is, a player a team has developed and is totally familiar with in terms of background, health and the like. Furthermore, it’s foolish to pretend that Fowler is the same caliber of player as Machado. Fowler is tremendous; he’s one of the best leadoff hitters in the game and perhaps perpetually underrated. But like we noted before, Machado looks like a future Hall of Famer.

So maybe the Orioles would be willing to throw a couple opt-outs in a, say, 10-year deal to convince Machado to hang around? A rule is only a rule until it is broken, and I tend to think the Orioles would bend that one if it meant locking up Machado.

There is something to be said about timing when it comes to trading any player. The Minnesota Twins, for instance, are looking to maximize their return on Brian Dozier — a very good player on an incredible deal that has him under team control for two years, like Machado — coming off a 40-plus home run season. Now imagine if Dozier was five years younger, could play shortstop and was a premium defender.

You can argue about whether 2015 or 2016 was Machado’s best season, but you’ll still come to the conclusion that he’s saved his best for last. The recent track record, age and pedigree mean that one could basically hold an interested team at ransom while taking your pick of their best prospects and/or young MLB players.

But does that make sense for the Orioles? Well, it doesn’t really feel like it.

Machado is basically the age of a lot of top prospects, despite having nearly 3,000 plate appearances and over 600 MLB games on his resume. Machado is younger than Kris Bryant, Sean Manaea, Braden Shipley, Trey Mancini (!), Willson Contreras, Aaron Judge, Joc Pederson and Jorge Soler. Bryant is the only player on that list anywhere near as accomplished as Machado. That’s not to say that a deal similar to the one that netted the White Sox Yoan Moncada for Chris Sale wouldn’t be interesting and/or worthwhile, but it takes two to tango. There’s no guarantee that there’s another Moncada out there, or a team willing to move him.

It’s like Ted DiBiase used to say, “Everyone has a price!”

With that said, it still doesn’t really make sense to move Machado right now. The team just plunged a ton of cash into re-signing Davis, so it makes sense to keep the team around him as competitive as possible, does it not? Moving Machado would hypothetically shift the team’s competitive window to the back end of the Davis contract, when he’s far less likely to be effective. Now with that said, he wasn’t particularly effective in 2016, and in these scenarios, the better player dominates how the whole situation is handled. There’s no doubt that Machado is the superior player in virtually all but one aspect. Still, it seems to make more sense to surround Davis and Machado with more talent than subtract — at least on the MLB side.

Additionally, it’ll come as no surprise to anyone who follows the team closely that the farm system is not all that well-regarded. John Sickels of MinorLeagueBall.com listed the O’s as the No. 27 farm system in baseball this past spring, which was actually down from 26th the year before. Adding Cody Sedlock in the draft certainly helped, but it’s still not likely to be a farm system that’s outside of the bottom one-third in the game. A Machado trade would certainly help restock the system, so to speak, but again we’ve discussed the difficulty there of finding a suitor and one that’s willing to move those prospects. Even still, is it going to vault the Orioles above the middle of the pack, farm-wise? The White Sox, who had the No. 24 system entering 2016 according to Sickels, needed to make two massive trades to vault to where they are now as a system, and it took adding Reynaldo Lopez, Lucas Giolito, Michael Kopech and Moncada to make that jump.

Restocking the farm system has its merits on the surface, but also think about how the limited prospect depth is scattered in the O’s system. Chance Sisco and Mancini are on the cusp of the big leagues. Jomar Reyes is coming off a tremendously disappointing 2016 season and is a few years away at best. Hunter Harvey is a total wild card. Sedlock will likely move quickly as a college righty. Most of the internal “help” for this team is close to MLB-ready. Again, it just feels like it makes more sense for the team to take another run at it, considering they were one dubious Buck Showalter decision away from possibly advancing into the American League Division Series.  

With that said, should the Orioles make Machado available, there’ll be no shortage of suitors. Virtually no team would be “out” on him, since he has the positional flexibility to play both shortstop and third base. For instance, if the Rockies really wanted him, they could put him next to Nolan Arenado and find a way to make it work with Trevor Story. The Dodgers could pair him with Corey Seager and move Justin Turner to second base. Basically, it’d be a 29-team derby to see what the Orioles could extort from the rest of the league.

It’d be a lot of fun — until it was over.

Basically, here’s where I’m at: Machado will still have a ton of value a year from now, when the acquiring team still has the option to slap him with a Qualifying Offer should an extension not happen. Chances are, the acquiring team will want a negotiating window with Machado before serious chatter takes place, anyhow. So ride out this season and see where things are. If Manny is willing to sign an extension in the meantime, get it done. If not, there’s an entire offseason next winter to make a deal happen.