Manny Machado homers twice to lead Padres

Machado’s home run was his 20th of the season. He hit a solo shot off Bryce Elder in the fourth inning. Machado had been 0-for-9 with four walks in three games since the All-Star break entering Monday. Machado is in the midst of one of the most difficult seasons of his career as he raised his averaged to .201 on the season with the two-hit effort Monday.

Machado, who certainly isn’t used to coming out of non-blowouts, was lifted for a pinch-runner after the single, which proved to be key. The next batter, Gavin Sheets, hit a grounder to shortstop Andrés Giménez against a shifted infield. Second baseman Ernie Clement, pulled over towards first, decided against trying to beat the pinch-runner, Jace Bowen, to second base, and the Jays settled for the out at first. Had Machado been running, there’s little doubt the Padres would have retired him. Bowen, though, went on to steal third and score the go-ahead run on Ty France’s sac fly. The three-hit game was Machado’s first since April and just his second of the year. It raised his average from .196 to .203, making this the first time since May 7 that he’s finished a game over the Mendoza Line. Since bottoming out at .166 last month, he’s hit .279 with eight homers and 23 RBI in his last 30 games.

The superstar third baseman was held out of action on Wednesday due to soreness in his foot after fouling a ball off of it during Tuesday’s game. It appears all is good now though, as he’s right back at the hot corner and batting cleanup against Diamondbacks’ right-hander Merrill Kelly on Thursday evening in San Diego.

Padres manager Craig Stammen told reporters X-rays came back negative on Machado’s foot after fouling a ball off it during Tuesday’s contest at Petco Park. The 34-year-old receives an extremely rare day off with Sung-Mun Song taking over at the hot corner in his absence. Fantasy managers should consider him day-to-day for now. He’s endured an abysmal first half at the plate by his usual standards, slashing .188/.282/.404 with 18 homers, 51 RBI and two steals in 374 plate appearances through 89 games.

Machado was intentionally walked with two on and two out in the fifth, after which Jack Dreyer got Gavin Sheets to ground out. He came up again with two on in the seventh, but this time there was a righty in the game, no base open and one out. He was pitched to, and he homered just over the wall in center on an 0-2 middle-middle fastball from Kyle Hurt. It was Machado’s fourth homer in eight games and sixth in 14 games.

Machado has three homers and four doubles in his last eight games. He’s still batting just .189 for the year, but things are getting better.

Machado’s 11th homer in the fourth off Grant Holmes accounted for the only run in the finale of what was an incredibly low scoring day of baseball; 24 teams combined to scored 64 runs, with no team scoring more than six runs. Seven of the 12 games saw the teams total five runs or fewer. Machado, a future Hall of Famer, is currently hitting .185/.265/.384, probably due to analytics and algorithms and Driveline, which could all be fixed if someone would hire John Smoltz as a GM and Jeff Frye as a manager.

Machado drove in a run on a double in the third inning to put the Padres on the board. He then plated his second RBI with a groundout in the eighth. With two runners on in the top of the tenth, he put the Padres ahead with a three-run blast off Joe Ross, driving in five of the team’s six runs in Saturday’s win. The 33-year-old third baseman is hitting .178/.256/.367 with 13 homers and 41 RBI across 306 plate appearances.

Machado took Orioles reliever Albert Suárez deep in the ninth inning to close out a five-homer afternoon for the Padres that included blasts by Jackson Merrill, Samad Taylor, Gavin Sheets and Rodolfo Durán. The 33-year-old veteran third baseman has hit a bit of a rough patch lately, batting .196 (9-for-46) with two homers and five RBI since the start of June.

Machado has 13 hits in his last 116 at-bats because of analytics, apparently. The Padres continue to show him respect by refusing to bat him lower than fourth in the lineup, but it seems like that needs to change. He’s at just .169/.254/.342 for the season, and while a decent rebound still seems likely, it’s probably time to start thinking of him as more of a .240-.250 hitter going forward.