Manny Machado choosing the Padres set the White Sox back

It was a tough day when we all found out that Manny Machado was going to the San Diego Padres. It legitimately seemed like the Chicago White Sox had a chance to land the superstar free agent ahead of the 2019 season but he opted for southern California.

That was a tough pill to swallow because he seemed like the perfect fit at the time but it never came to be. It really seemed like the White Sox had a chance to get him but it was one of the many times that they failed to make a big move like that.

For Machado, the White Sox can’t be made fun of too much. They offered less guaranteed money to Machado than San Diego did but the contract was certainly more lucrative with incentives.

He chose to go there where the pressure would be lesser and the money would be more of a guarantee. Nobody can blame him if we are being honest with ourselves.

The White Sox get made fun of for it a lot but they did do what they can to try and convince him that this was a good place for him. You all remember the Jon Jay and Yonder Alonso fiasco that went down as they tried to recruit Machado.

The Chicago White Sox missed out a lot by letting Manny Machado go.

All of these years later, it is obvious that the White Sox were set back a lot by letting Machado walk away from them. It looked like it didn’t matter when Yoan Moncada was on the rise but he has not lived up to expectations even slightly.

Having Machado on this team right now would have changed everything. The White Sox wouldn’t be one of a handful of teams that have never given out a 100 million dollar contract and they would have a legit superstar MVP-caliber player in their lineup.

For 2022, his name will certainly appear on the ballot for the National League MVP to some extent. He is slashing .298/.369/.532 for an OPS of .902. He has 31 home runs and 100 RBI going into this series. All of this has accumulated him a 6.5 WAR so far for the year.

Machado is also an elite defensive third baseman as proven by the fact that he is a multi-time Gold Glove Award winner. A player like this would have been amazing for the White Sox and they let him slip away.

Now, they get to face him in this three-game series against the San Diego Padres coming up. It should be entertaining as the Padres are fighting for their playoff lives and the White Sox are trying to play spoiler. We’ll see how both Machado and the White Sox play against one another.