Machado has been as reliable a producer as anybody ever was. This is a lot like the Pujols contract situation. He turns 31 this summer and the contract goes past his age 40 season. So the question is at what point does the reliable production go over the hump and start downhill, and how steep will the downhill be.
Albert hit hump time near the end of his time in St. Louis, around or within a couple years of his age 30, ahem, season. His production became less regular but still pretty good up until the last couple seasons before the pandemic season. So he was pretty productive until 35 or so. It seems like Machado could hold up physically better than Albert, so there is that.
It seems like the Pads should be able to definitely get 3 or 4 prime years, but he will be a guy in his 30s pushing his body hard, so injuries could become a thing. It seems like aspects of the downhill should be obvious by then, age 34 or 35 season, but he could still be a force beyond that, or it could be all but over. If they can put enough of a team around him, they could be a force for quite a few years. There is the question of how much of an impediment the contract will be toward the end, but who knows how the economics of the game will evolve by then. The Angels are still there.
Its definitely a different approach than what the Cardinals are doing. It seems high risk, a lot of eggs in a basket. We don’t know enough about the insides of the economics of ownership to judge how serious that risk could be or not be. We do know that the Cardinals and some other teams do not go that route, so we might imply something from that.