Manny Machado becoming a playoff villain shouldn’t surprise Sox fans

Manny Machado becoming a playoff villain shouldn’t surprise Sox fans originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston

Dodgers faithful, we feel your pain.

Losing as the heavy favorites in the postseason is one thing. Losing to your archrivals is another. But losing to Manny Machado? That’s suffering on a scale orders of magnitude greater than any fanbase should endure.

With all due respect to Aaron Judge, Gerrit Cole, and the rest of the Yankees, if there’s one player left in this postseason that Red Sox fans can’t stand, it’s Machado.

He’s an irritant, an instigator, and a boundary pusher, and that’s bad enough. But he’s also the player who ended Dustin Pedroia’s career at least five years too soon, which may cost the former MVP a spot in the Hall of Fame.

Watching Machado stray ever-so-legally out of the baseline and into that gray area he calls home on Tuesday night exhumed painful memories. The play keyed a six-run second that lifted the Padres to a 6-5 victory over the Dodgers and 2-1 series lead before a delirious Petco Park echoing chants of, “BEAT L.A.!” (a sentiment we can otherwise get behind).

It looked like a blatant rules violation, and plenty of Dodgers agreed. But Machado was actually playing smart, since he’s allowed to create his own running lane if he’s not trying to avoid a tag. By shifting onto the infield grass, he put himself directly in line with Freddie Freeman’s throw from first base, which glanced off his back and into the outfield.

Instead of a forceout and possible 3-6-1 double play, the Padres had two on and nobody out. When Fernando Tatis depressed the plunger on the game-breaking two-run homer to complete the uprising a handful of batters later, the impact of Machado’s play became fully apparent.

Much like Bill Belichick flummoxing the Ravens with tackle-eligible shenanigans a decade ago in the playoffs and then smugly insinuating he outsmarted Baltimore counterpart John Harbaugh, Machado followed the letter of the law, if not necessarily the spirit of it.

“Yeah, I mean, just knowing the rules,” Machado told reporters, his smirk audible. “Just trying to make it a tough throw for him going to second base. This is the first time it’s ever happened to me. We’ve been doing it for years. I’ve been doing it since I was back in the day in Baltimore with Buck (Showalter). So, you’ve just got to know the rules. And you’ve got to know what you’ve got to do out there.”

Invoking Baltimore made the Red Sox connection even more painfully direct.

Back in 2017, after all, a young Machado spiked Pedroia in an attempt to break up a double play. As with most things Machado, the slide crossed a line, but it wasn’t obviously egregious until replays showed how he subtly lifted his spike to catch the back of Pedroia’s knee. Because the second baseman had planted awkwardly to take Xander Bogaerts’s relay from deep in the hole, the cartilage cushioning his femur and tibia paid the price.

Pedroia gutted out the rest of that season, even hitting .295, but the damage was done. Surgery begat surgeries, and Pedroia played only nine more games. He retired in 2021 and underwent a partial knee replacement that will impact him for the rest of his life. Such is the Manny Machado Effect, though Pedroia says he has made peace with it.

That’s an extreme example, but it fits the pattern. When Machado transgresses boundaries, he tends to straddle them rather than obliterate them. During Sunday’s Game 2, for instance, he chucked a ball toward the Dodgers dugout between innings. Enraged L.A. players believed he had aimed for manager Dave Roberts, perhaps in retaliation for Tatis taking a fastball off the hip.

Replays showed both that A), Machado threw the ball harder than necessary, and B) that Roberts was never in any real danger. That didn’t stop right-hander Jack Flaherty from screaming at Machado from the top step and Roberts from suggesting that Machado had targeted him.

“I throw balls all the time into the dugouts, both dugouts,” Machado said innocently, plausible deniability once again his friend.

It’s the kind of thing that would be absolutely infuriating if it wasn’t so … no, it’s just absolutely infuriating. The Padres may be the greater Cinderella story in the face of the superstar-laden demolition Dodgers, but sorry, Boston just can’t root for Machado.

Go, L.A.! Go, L.A.!