Manny Machado said the San Diego Padres went after Aaron Judge in the 2022 offseason knowing full well the Yankees slugger was probably never leaving New York. Speaking with insider Buster Olney, Machado said the pursuit still had a real logic to it because San Diego was trying to build a lineup that could overwhelm opponents with star power.
“Man, it would have been impressive to see Aaron Judge in a Padre uniform,” Machado said, adding that he did not think there was a chance Judge would leave New York and that he would not have left either. Judge eventually returned to the Yankees after that offseason, but the Padres kept pushing elsewhere and signed Xander Bogaerts during the same winter.
The size of the swing explains why the idea lingers. Machado said the vision would have been himself, Juan Soto, Fernando Tatis and Judge in the same Padres lineup, a group of four stars that would have changed the look of the club overnight. He also said he knew Peter Seidler was not going to stop pursuing Judge, and that the late owner wanted to keep chasing the best players available.
That pursuit fit the Padres’ recent pattern. Over the last few years, San Diego had been aggressive in both free agency and trades, repeatedly making moves designed to shorten the distance between contender and favorite. In that context, the Judge chase was less a mystery than an example of how far the Padres were willing to reach, even when the odds pointed the other way.
Machado’s comments leave the Padres with a familiar kind of what-if: not whether Judge might have fit in San Diego, but how different the franchise would look if one of baseball’s biggest names had actually said yes.
