Manny Machado credits new teammates for Padres’ surge

When the West Coast MLB play ended connected July 3, the San Diego Padres recovered themselves successful a acquainted situation. The Los Angeles Dodgers, a squad that has won 11 of the past 12 NL West part titles, were 9 wins up of their Southern California rivals successful the standings.

Over the adjacent period and a half, the Padres managed to adjacent the spread – and more, reaching archetypal spot successful the part for the archetypal clip since 2010. From July 4th to August 14th, the squad went 23-12 successful their past 25 games. At the aforesaid time, Los Angeles went 12-21, resulting successful a 10-game turnaround successful San Diego's favor.

The 3rd baseman, 29-year-old Manny Machado, admitted that the Padres, aft back-to-back losses connected the roadworthy astatine the Cincinnati Reds and Philadelphia Phillies, did not deliberation astir catching up with the Dodgers earlier the commencement of the winning streak.

"At that point, we weren't truly looking up," Machado told MLB.com via AJ Casavella. - We were conscionable trying to get backmost connected the winning streak.

And that's precisely what they succeeded successful doing, particularly aft the progressive commercialized deadline connected July 31. The Padres person mislaid conscionable 3 of 12 games since the nine had arguably the astir progressive commercialized deadline among contending teams, bolstering roster extent arsenic they look toward a heavy tally successful October.

New players made a important contribution

Such enactment has travel astatine a terms – according to MLB Pipeline, the Padres present person the weakest workplace strategy successful the league – but Machado believes his recently acquired teammates person played a cardinal relation successful the team's existent success.

- They won america a fewer games... Our lineup is overmuch antithetic now, and the bullpen is doing its occupation - said Machado. "I've been successful their shoes before." It's hard to marque an accommodation - caller environment, caller names, caller faces, caller league, antithetic division. All this is demanding. It takes clip to get utilized to it. Seeing them adjust, they acceptable perfectly.

The 2 players the Padres traded for -- 3rd baseman Willy Wagner and starter JP Sears -- presently play for the El Paso Chihuahuas, the organization's Triple-A team. Most of the different 5 rookies enactment up notable numbers.