So what happens if hypothetically the Sox sign Machado for, say, 175 million and it later comes out that the owners were in fact colluding to suppress salaries? Nothing?
There is something to be said about actually trying to improve your team in this day and age, but it's separate from success/failure in acquiring the guy or not.
He also carried a much higher soft contact %. It's probably an outlier, but I'm more comfortable saying that something was off about Harper's meh year than I am with Machado
Machado's 2017 was such an anomaly it should be completely thrown out. He had by far his worst BABIP of .265 despite having his best Hard contact percentage and no significant change is his GB/FB ratio compared to 16 and 18. That's historically bad luck for a player of his caliber.