Manny Machado gives honest answer about Padres struggles

It’s no secret that the San Diego Padres are in a slump.

After the Padres lost their sixth straight game in a 5-0 loss to the New York Mets, Manny Machado met with reporters and was asked if the team needs to find a sense of urgency.

“You guys want to hit the panic button, you guys have all been talking about it, you have all been negative about everything we’ve been doing, and we already know what we’ve been doing,” Machado said.

“We haven’t been really playing well. …Try to keep out the negative stuff out of our heads and again like I said, you just gotta try to stay positive going forward.”

On May 18, the Padres were 29-18 and just got ahead of the Dodgers for first place in the National League West. But since they dropped the series winning just one out of two games, they’re 32-30 and are just hanging on to stay above .500.

Over their last 13 games since the Dodgers series, the Padres are 3-10.

Their struggles are primarily due to the team’s lack of offense as they are ranked at the bottom in almost every hitting category, including batting average [.215], on-base percentage [.289], slugging [.356], runs [235], and RBIs [229].

The only hitting category they are close to being in the middle of the pack with the rest of the league is in home runs [63], sitting tied at 18th with the New York Mets and Detroit Tigers.

“We don’t wanna go 0 for 20, we don’t wanna go 0 for 40,” Machado said. “We were two games, three games from winning a division last year. So every game matters.”

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Earlier this week, the Padres’ lineup was shaken up after the club decided to designate Nick Castellanos for assignment on June 3, and release him two days later.

Castellanos was in the middle of the worst season in his career, slashing .191/.221/.339 while hitting just 4 home runs and striking out 34 times.

Another reason for their struggles is also due to the slow start of Fernando Tatis Jr., who finally hit his first home run of the season on May 30, against the Nationals.

Ironically, while the Padres have been stuck in this cold stretch, Tatis Jr. has started to heat up at the plate, hitting .380 with 19 hits and 3 RBIs.

But like the rest of the Padres lineup, Machado has also been caught in a slump, hitting .175 with a 73 OPS+.

“There’s nobody more frustrated than everyone in here,” Machado said. “At the end of the day, stay positive, keep going forward, we have a lot of baseball to be played still.”