Manny Machado has spent most of his career collecting the kind of accolades that usually come with October baseball - the All-Star nods, the Silver Sluggers, the Gold Gloves, the MVP votes, the big numbers. What he still doesn’t have is the one thing that tends to define a superstar’s postseason résumé: a World Series ring.
That omission is why Machado showed up on MLB.com’s Sept. 19 list of each 2026 playoff contender’s top player who has yet to win it all. The same list included Bryce Harper, Aaron Judge, Jacob deGrom and Tarik Skubal - elite names with plenty of hardware, plenty of playoff games, and no final champagne shower to their name.
For Machado, the championship chase has been tied to a career that has largely played out away from the game’s biggest stage. The only real exception came in 2018, when he was traded from the Baltimore Orioles to the Los Angeles Dodgers at the deadline.
Los Angeles went on to lose that year’s World Series to the Boston Red Sox. Outside of that brief run, Machado has not gotten back to the Fall Classic.
And yet, his time in San Diego has helped shape the most successful stretch in Padres history. Since signing with the club as a free agent before the 2019 season, after 6-1/2 years with Baltimore and two months with the Dodgers, Machado has watched the Padres reach the playoffs four times: 2020, 2022, 2024 and 2025.
They’re on the brink again this year. San Diego can clinch a postseason spot with a win Wednesday night against the Los Angeles Dodgers and a loss by the Arizona Diamondbacks to the Colorado Rockies.
If that happens, it would mark the first time the Padres have made the playoffs in three straight seasons. That would be a notable milestone for a franchise that had reached the postseason only five times in its first 50 years before Machado arrived.
Machado’s own case is built on durability as much as star power. He’s in his 15th season overall and his eighth with the Padres, and the resume keeps stacking up: seven All-Star selections, three Silver Slugger Awards, two Gold Gloves, five top-10 MVP finishes and 63.4 career WAR.
The availability piece might be the most impressive part. The only significant injury absence of his career came in his second full season in Baltimore, when he played 82 games.
Since joining San Diego, he has played fewer than 150 games only once, appearing in 138 in 2023. Even during the COVID-shortened 2020 season, he was in all 60 games.
This season has followed that same script, even if the start was rough. Machado played in 153 of San Diego’s first 157 games as of Wednesday.
Through May 20, he was hitting .182 with a .616 OPS. Over the next four months, he settled in.
As of Wednesday, he had 28 home runs and 84 RBIs, both right in line with his usual production, though his .218 average and .710 OPS were career lows, and his 139 strikeouts were a career high.
At age 33, Machado is also still in the kind of territory that keeps the long-view milestones in play. He has 2,193 hits, and a July 2025 report from The Athletic via The Sporting News called him the active player “with the best chance of reaching 3,000 hits.”
Another MLB.com report from July 2025 pointed out that Machado had already become the 12th player in MLB history to reach more than 2,000 hits and 350 home runs in his age-32 season or earlier. That group includes Hank Aaron, Lou Gehrig, Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Frank Robinson, Miguel Cabrera, Albert Pujols and Alex Rodriguez.
With his contract running through the 2033 season, Machado has time to chase the 3,000-hit and 500-homer club, a group with only seven members: Aaron, Mays, Cabrera, Pujols, Rodriguez, Eddie Murray and Rafael Palmeiro.
But the bigger question right now is what happens this October, not what happens years from now. If the playoffs started Wednesday night, the Padres would open against the Atlanta Braves in the three-game wild-card round.
A win there would send them to Los Angeles to face the Dodgers, and a victory in that series would move them into the NLCS against one of the Milwaukee Brewers, Chicago Cubs or Philadelphia Phillies. From there, the most likely World Series opponent would be either the Tampa Bay Rays or the New York Yankees.
San Diego’s roster looks built for that kind of run. Michael King, Casey Mize, Robbie Ray and Nick Pivetta anchor the rotation, while Fernando Tatis Jr. and Jackson Merrill have been driving the offense. The Padres have won 13 of their past 15 games entering Wednesday night, and the bullpen may be the separator, with Mason Miller, Adrian Morejon and Bradgley Rodriguez all positioned to matter when the games tighten up.
For Machado, that’s the path. For the Padres, it’s the chance to turn one of the franchise’s best stretches into something even bigger.
In Other News...
Tatis Just Turned A Padres Bullpen Question Into Front Office Pressure
With the Padres back in the postseason, Fernando Tatis Jr. has already shifted the conversation from celebration to retention, publicly urging president of baseball operations A.J. Preller to bring back free-agent reliever Adrian Morejon. It is the kind of comment that lands differently when it comes from one of the franchises face-of-the-team players, especially with Morejon having become a key part of San Diegos bullpen mix.
Now the question is less about whether Morejon has earned a strong case and more about whether the Padres are willing to act on it under their new ownership. Keeping a reliable arm in place always comes with financial tradeoffs, and Tatis public push adds a little more heat to a decision Preller already has to weigh carefully as San Diego looks ahead beyond this October run. [Read more 🡒]
Craig Stammen Made The Padres Embrace A Risky Plan At Last
In late July, Craig Stammen had plenty of reason to be skeptical about A.J. Prellers unconventional pitching plan. The Padres were trying to navigate a rotation that no longer fit the traditional mold, so the club began leaning on pitchers in specific matchup roles instead of asking them to work as classic starters. It was a risky shift, but one that matched the roster the Padres had in front of them.
Once Stammen embraced it, the approach helped steady the team through a useful stretch and kept San Diego in the race long enough to justify adding more pitching at the trade deadline. The arrangement also underscored how much of the burden on the rotation belonged to both Stammen and Preller, whose shared fingerprints were all over the problems and the fixes that followed. [Read more 🡒]
Padres Clinched A Spot But This Series Still Carries Real Stakes
The Padres may already have punched their ticket to October, but the margin for error is still thin as they open a series with the Diamondbacks, who remain alive in the playoff race. San Diego enters the matchup sitting atop the wild-card picture, and Arizona needs every game it can get, which gives this weekend an October feel even before the postseason begins.
Casey Mize is set to start the opener for San Diego against Brandon Pfaadt, and both clubs are likely to treat the series like a test run for the kind of decisions that get magnified in the playoffs. For the Padres, it is less about securing a berth now and more about lining up the rotation and navigating a game that still matters plenty in the standings. [Read more 🡒]