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People shouldn’t be hitting the panic button on Manny Machado after he collected just one hit through the first week of the season. But if they are, there’s an easy way to walk them back to reality.

Machado is making contact — very good contact — when he is up. That he has one hit to show for it is one of those early-season anomalies that simply being in the lineup every day will easily rectify.

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Machado hits baseballs very, very hard. It’s why he’s been one of the most dangerous hitters in the game since he came up in 2012, and why he’ll continue to develop into an even better one in 2015.

According to Fangraphs, Machado’s batting average on balls in play is .063, slightly better than his .053 batting average but nowhere near the .317 and .322 BABIPs of 2013 and 2014, or .283 and .278 batting averages of his first two full seasons.

While similar numbers suggested a Chris Davis resurgence that never came a year ago, Machado will end up climbing back toward .300 because he’s hitting the ball so hard.

Davis knows something about putting swings together and not getting the results, but said Friday that Machado deserved better than his output so far.

MLB’s new Statcast data is slowly being rolled out this season, with all 30 ballparks equipped to track everything from ball flight and speed off the bat to route efficiency and throw speed in the field.

One of the first data sets to be organized and served up to the public is hit speed, and it should come as no surprise to fans who have watched him smoke doubles to the gap for the last two years that only a handful of people have hit a ball harder than Manny Machado this year.

Machado’s hardest hit ball, according to data collected at Baseball Savant, was over 109 mph, the sixth-hardest hit ball all year. His average of 104.19 mph ranks 10th, and no ball off his bat has been slower than 100 mph at peak velocity.

Why does this matter? Because hard-hit balls have a much better chance of falling than ones that a fielder can settle under and get a glove on. If Machado keeps smoking balls the way he has through the first week of the season, they’re going to find gaps in the outfield and probably go for extra bases.

So until those hits start to fall, relish in his still otherworldly defense and understand that any struggles for Machado are just temporary.

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