By Anthony Cardone

It has been a long offseason for free agents this winter looking for a new home, especially infielder Manny Machado. Machado played his first six years for the Baltimore Orioles and spent half of last year with the Los Angeles Dodgers, collecting four All-Stars and two Gold Gloves in his career. On Feb. 21, Machado finally landed his name on a contract. He signed the largest free agent contract in sports history, at the time surpassing Alex Rodriguez’s $275 million contract with a $300 million deal with the San Diego Padres.

For the Padres, this was a huge day in their history. With a club that has one of the best farm systems in all of the sport, the future in San Diego is very bright. The team just added one of the best players in the league into the depth chart.
But was Manny Machado worth $300 million?

If any of you have forgotten, Machado isn’t the type of player to give you 100 percent every time he’s up to the plate. If you remember in the postseason last year, he would, for the most part, jog to first base or not go for a ball at his hardest, and it hurt the Dodgers many times throughout the playoffs.

He would play very dirty toward other players, stepping on the ankles of first basemen and always getting into fights with pitchers. It’s not really the type of attitude you want in the clubhouse.

Of course, you want a player who plays hard, but where do you draw the line? He even said, “That’s not my cup of tea,” when asked why he didn’t hustle down the first base line in one of the playoff games.

“Obviously, I’m not going to change; I’m not the type of player that’s going to be ‘Johnny Hustle,’ and run down the line and slide to first base and … you know, whatever can happen. That’s just not my personality, that’s not who I am.”

Is that the type of player you give $300 million to? I sure as heck wouldn’t. Maybe that’s why his market was so slow and no one wanted to give him that type of money. Who knows, this could turn out to be the worst contract in sports history if this guy doesn’t try in the next 10 years out west.

Manny Machado better fix his act, or Padres fans will quickly turn on him. It will even affect his game, and that’s what happened to the Dodgers. He didn’t show up in the playoffs, batting .218 overall and just .182 in the World Series. The Dodgers gave up quite a lot to get Machado, and now he’s under contract for the next decade?

Doesn’t seem like it was the smartest move on the Padres’ part. We’ll see if Johnny Hustle starts to care in the near future.