BRADENTON, FLA. — So far, it has been a soft-contact spring for most of the regulars in the Orioles batting order, but the guy who had every excuse to get off to a slow start with the bat is doing just fine.
The other nine position players who figure to get substantial playing time at the start of the regular season are batting a combined .179 through the first 14 exhibition games. Third baseman Manny Machado, who missed the final two months of the 2014 season after undergoing his second knee operation, has looked comfortable at the plate from the start.
If that's a surprise to anyone else, Machado acts like he knew the minute he picked up a bat in December that it wouldn't take long to get back in the swing of things.
"I've been ready since August, since I had surgery,'' said Machado, who was batting .300 in Grapefruit League play before going 0-for-3 in Sunday's 4-2 loss to the Pittsburgh Pirates. "I'm not wasting no time. I'm here to work and I've been doing what I need to do to get ready for the season and come out strong. I missed a lot of time and I feel healthy and I'm out there doing what I can."
To be semantically accurate, Machado has been determined since August. He didn't get to the hitting phase of his rehab program until about three months ago and had a couple of important things to do in between — one of them the first phase of his rehab program.
"The first day I came back from my honeymoon," he said, "I took a couple of swings and I was like 'Man, I'm ready to go. I don't need any more rehab. I'm ready to go and start the season right. I'm ready to roll.'
"It's all mental. Hitting's mental. I know my swing's there. I know my legs are under me now. It's just a matter of getting the right timing and — thank God — I've been squaring balls up, but I've also been hitting balls off the end and striking out. It's all just part of the game."
It didn't go so smoothly the first time he went through this. Machado suffered a similar left knee injury at the very end of the 2013 season and wasn't a full go during spring training last year, which was reflected in his offensive production in the first two months after his return in May. He was just starting to feel like himself again when he crumpled to the ground during an August at-bat and started the whole process all over again.
The only positive that came out of that was the experience he gained the first time around.
"Definitely, the second time through it, it's a lot easier,'' he said. "The first time, I had no idea what to expect. Had no idea what was going on. What I could do, what I couldn't do, how I felt. It was all new to me. It was pretty tough to come back and try to do a lot of things that I wasn't able to do."
The biggest thing he took away from his left knee surgery and rehab was the confidence that his repaired right knee could handle a lot more than he might have otherwise thought.
"I've been through it once, so I knew it wasn't going to get any worse,'' he said. "It was fixed. Any little thing I would have done, I would not have aggravated it. I was ready to go. My knee is brand new. That's the thing about surgery. You can't baby it. That's what I've learned the second time around, you've got to just go out there and do what you can do.
"There were a lot of things I couldn't do to get ready for the season. This year was completely different. I went out and did my offseason workouts, I hit every day and did what I do. It was a normal offseason for me. Just getting ready for the season."
Of course, there is more to the game than just swinging the bat, and the fact that Machado had two knee surgeries so close together left room to speculate that he might not be the same defensive player who won a Platinum Glove at third base two seasons ago. He has already gone a long way toward minimizing that concern with a number of flashy plays at third, and has also run the bases more aggressively than might be expected at this point in the exhibition season.
"That tells how much, because he didn't do it that quick last year,'' manager Buck Showalter said. "He had basically the same procedure. It might tell you how much more confident he feels now, because basically he knew there was a good chance that he would at some point in his career going to have to do the other knee. I think to get that out of the way, you can see that he's playing with abandon."
It would be normal for Machado to wonder if he has put his knee problems behind him for good, but it certainly doesn't look like he has a worry in the world.
"I'm going up there attacking like it is Opening Day or Game 7 of the World Series,'' he said. "I just want to get that out of the way and be ready so when April comes I'll be ready to go and nothing is new to me."
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