NL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: PHILLIES VS PADRES

October 17, 2022

Manny Machado

Petco Park

San Diego Padres

Workout Day Press Conference

Q. All season long I think you guys talked about how you felt like there was more you guys could be doing as a team, and after what you've done with the Mets and the Dodgers, do you feel like you're reaching what you guys are capable of?

MANNY MACHADO: Yeah, playing good baseball. Been working all year to get better and try to strive for something, and we've had glimpses of it all year. Definitely getting it all clicking at the same time has helped for sure.

I think whenever it's postseason baseball, everyone has one goal: It's to win. Whenever you have that and everything clicking at the same time, it's dangerous.

We have a lot of guys that are taking over and helping us get to where we want to get to, and whenever all 26 guys are contributing to a team, that makes it dangerous.

Q. Seemed like you guys were the underdogs going into the Mets series and the Dodgers series. How much of that was a motivating factor for you guys, and now that you have the home-field advantage and going against another Wild Card entrant, do you have to change the mind sets?

MANNY MACHADO: Yeah, definitely home field is always huge. Playing in front of the crowd, especially after what we saw what happened this weekend, you know how the crowd and the city was behind us, it's definitely going to be huge for us going into Game 1 and Game 2.

That's always a bonus.

Ultimately it's just going out there and playing our baseball. I think we can play our best baseball, our Padre baseball the way we've been playing, and not really worrying about anything else. It's just go out there and just compete. I think that's the mindset going into this series. We're playing against a good team.

It's just about going out there and just staying focused and staying in the game and taking it day by day.

Q. The Dodgers have been such an enormous obstacle to this organization for a while. Now that you guys have put them in the rear view mirror in the postseason, is it difficult in any way to hit the reset button and focus on the Phillies and not have a Dodger hangover?

MANNY MACHADO: I think as a group, we all enjoyed that night. Obviously beating one of the best teams in baseball, you soak it all in. You enjoy it. Then once Saturday was over, focus was on to the next.

We've got to stay focused on what the real goal is, and it's to bring a championship to this city.

I don't think any of us are losing that focus. I think we're going to go out there and compete, and we're going to keep doing what we've got to do every single inning.

I think as a group, we take it inning by inning, out by out, and whatever happens after 27 outs happens.

But we've got to focus on that one out, one inning at a time.

Q. I know you guys don't probably care about what's being discussed nationally on topics like this, but there's discussion that the last round not being seven games was potentially unfair to some of the 100-win teams. What are your thoughts on some of that discussion?

MANNY MACHADO: I don't get into politics. I stay away from that. I have no idea what they're talking about, if that's even being spoken about.

I think we've been playing baseball for over 100 years. It's been the same system going on. Obviously we added a little bit this year with the Wild Card making it three. But it's always been five, seven, seven. I don't get into politics stuff. That's all I know.

Q. After seeing kind of what it meant to the city when you guys won on Saturday and seeing how much they got behind you, those two games in the DS, was that kind of what you envisioned when you signed here in 2019?

MANNY MACHADO: Yeah, San Diego has always drawn great crowds. It's been one of the top ballparks for years attendance-wise, one of the most exciting ballparks to visit.

Yeah, the only thing that was missing was just winning some ballgames and taking the team to the postseason and getting deep into October. Here we are.

I think the city got a little taste of it a couple years ago. Obviously they weren't able to come and watch it live. But they did this past weekend, and it showed. They brought the energy every single night, and we fed off of that, especially late into that Game 4 game.

We're going to need them to continue doing that, and we're just going to enjoy it. I think the city has enjoyed it. The city has enjoyed this whole weekend. Now it's on to the next one, which is trying to bring a championship back to the west in San Diego and trying to bring a World Series title to the city.

Q. Going up against a guy you know pretty well in Bryce Harper. You both signed in 2019 in kind of the same kind of process. What do you remember about following along with maybe what he and you were going through, and is it cool to see both those projects and those signings come to fruition?

MANNY MACHADO: Yeah, we've been linked since we got drafted, even before. We've gone way back. Obviously I signed with Baltimore, and he was at BC, so we were right up the road. So we played against each other for a long time.

And then leading up to free agency, we were two of the top free agents. And he went to a city that wanted to bring a championship back, and I went to a city that's never won a championship. Here we are a couple years later, we've done that, two organizations, and we've helped the organizations out big time.

It's going to be fun. He brings an energy. He's one of the best players in the game.

I think, honestly, we've got the two best teams going up against each other, and it's going to be a fun week for sure.

Q. If you could look back to that free agency, what factored into your decision, and has it worked out how you thought it would back then? What may have been different that you couldn't have known?

MANNY MACHADO: Where are we at, NLCS? I think it worked out pretty good, right? This has been the vision all along. I think going back to the meeting when I sat down with A.J. and he convinced me to come over here, I saw the vision. I saw what he had and what this organization meant.

Obviously the city was one of the best cities in the country and one of the most beautiful ballparks all across the nation. It was a matter of coming out here and trying to do something special, and here we are today.

We fell short last time. Now we're here. Now it's a matter of just going out there and competing and leaving it all out there.

The city, just by seeing the city and how the city reacted over -- especially in 2020, I think that was the biggest one, when we made the postseason. They weren't able to be here, and we were driving home, we're seeing everyone out on the streets, and they were going crazy. That was -- seeing that was huge, and they weren't even able to be a part of it.

Now here they are. You saw how the weekend was. It was unbelievable, what they've done and what they bring to the city.

We feed off of that as a team. This has been awesome. I can't really say much more than that.

Q. After that 2020 season, they went out and got Yu Darvish and Blake Snell and Joe Musgrove, three trades. Were you expecting any of that? What was that like to add three pretty prominent high-level starters in trades in one offseason?

MANNY MACHADO: Yeah, I mean, we fell short, obviously, and I think that was one of the reasons why we didn't have no pitching that year. Obviously we got a couple guys that got hurt. I mean, that was the biggest need for the ballclub.

I think A.J. has never been shy on going out there and trying to improve the team in whatever way we can. We had a young group of guys who contributed that year and were a big part of what we did offensively, and our biggest need was pitching, and he went out there and did that and reinforced our team.

Obviously we fell short the next year, but we bounced back this year, and we came up and we all played together as a group, and we made the best of it.

A.J. has never been one to shy away from making his ballclub better, and he did that as well this year, again, with bringing in Hader and Josh and Drury and Soto.

It's a matter of winning. I think that's the ultimate goal is bringing -- like I said, again, it's bringing a championship to the city.

Whatever you have to do to do that and put that ballclub out there, A.J. is going to go out there and do it, and that's also factored in Peter, Peter buying into in. I think Peter hasn't shied away on wanting to bring this to the city, and I don't think anyone wants it more than him and his family.

We're just one step closer.

Q. I wonder what you remember about the day that you spent in Philadelphia during your free agency period, and if at any point during that time, those months, if you ever thought you might be a Philly.

MANNY MACHADO: Yeah, obviously in free agency you're always -- your options are always open. I think that's the beauty of being a free agent is you get to explore, you get to see everything. You kind of get to see the board.

Yeah, definitely they treated me well when I went there, and it was a great time.

It was definitely an interesting offseason for sure for all of us. I think that's one thing that signing February 21 and Harper a couple weeks after that, I think top two free agents shouldn't be signing that late. I'll tell you that. I don't think that's right for an organization, I don't think that's right for baseball, but it is what it is.

Looking forward to going out there and playing this week for sure.