When Manny Machado’s new 10-year, $300 million contract with the San Diego Padres ends, he will still be younger than Robinson Cano is right now. This observation from CBS’s Mike Axisa is a great place to start in evaluating the Friars’ blockbuster deal with the 26-year-old superstar.

Love him or hate him, we can all agree that Machado is one of the best players in baseball. In 2013, ‘15, and ‘16, he posted WARs of 6.7, 7.1, and 6.9, and in 2018 he had the best offensive year of his career, batting .297 with 37 home runs and a .905 OPS, 46 percent better than the average Major League hitter. We’ll get into makeup later, but the first issue to tackle is the prudence of giving any player superstar money for ten years. Is it risky? Absolutely. Regardless of a player’s age, there is always risk of unforeseeable events throwing off your projections, and that risk increases the further into the future you try to project.

Just look at the Cubs’ Jason Heyward, who, like Machado, was 26 when he signed his 8-year, $184M contract. At that time, Heyward had a career .784 OPS, and it seemed reasonable to expect similar production for at least the first half of the deal. Shockingly, however, Heyward has posted just a .688 OPS through his age 26, 27, and 28 seasons—the most productive window in an average hitter’s career. As for career-debilitating injuries, often neck or back issues, these can hit players who seem at risk for short careers, like Prince Fielder, and those who seem like they should perform well into their mid-thirties, like David Wright.

In the absence of major injuries, though, a sudden Heyward-esque decline in that prime window is very much the exception to the rule, and Machado’s 10-year timeline contrasts significantly with the twin 10-year, $240M contracts that will pay Albert Pujols all the way through age 41 and Robinson Cano through age 40. Machado will “only” be 35 years old when he begins the last of his 10 years under contract.

While hoping for a player to provide any value at age 40 goes beyond wishful thinking, it’s actually plausible for a star like Machado to still be pretty damn good in that age 31 to 35 range. In 2018, for instance, we saw stellar seasons from J.D. Martinez (31 years old by season’s end, 1.031 OPS), Paul Goldschmidt (31, .922), and Matt Carpenter (33, .897), plus 35-and over outliers in Joey Votto (35, .837 OPS), Ben Zobrist (37, .817 OPS), and Nelson Cruz (38, .850 OPS). That’s not to say you’d commit $150 million right now just to get the rights to Machado from age 31 to 35; of course, if Machado delivers on the front half of this deal, he won’t have to be worth a full $150M on the back half for the signing to be a success. So let’s dig deeper into what San Diego can expect from Machado these next five years.

When evaluating a free agent, we usually start by looking for areas in which he excels. In Machado’s case, I’d ask: what areas doesn’t he excel in? The only one you can point to is speed, where he’s average, and even then, he stole 14 bases in 16 tries in 2018. Power? Machado has averaged 36 home runs a year from 2015-18—his 142 in that span ties Mike Trout for seventh. Even after moving from the band box of Camden Yards to the pitcher-friendly Dodger Stadium, (and facing unfamiliar NL West pitching), Manny hit 13 homers in 66 games for a 30-homer full season pace. According to MLB’s “Savant” collection of Statcast data, he was just inside the top 25 in average exit velocity (91.6) and barrels per plate appearance percentage (8.5%); Petco Park has a reputation for stifling power hitters, but those numbers play anywhere.

In fact, the great Eno Sarris over at The Athletic notes that while Petco features deep gaps, it’s actually well above average for high-velocity fly balls getting out to left field. As indicated by “Barrels”—balls off the bat at 98 mph+ and at sweet spot launch angles (usually between 20 and 35 degrees)—Machado has an elite fly ball profile, and his 4-year spray chart shows well over half his home runs go to left field.