Veteran first baseman Trey Mancini tells Roch Kubatko of MASNsports.com that he’s determined to retire after enjoying in components of eight main league seasons with the Orioles, Cubs, Astros and Angels. The 34-year-old appeared in 5 video games with the Halos earlier this 12 months, finishing his objective of creating it again for one final look in The Present after a virtually three-year layoff.
“I believe I knew over the previous couple of years that I may nonetheless make it again up, and that was the primary objective,” Mancini tells Kubtako (considered one of many must-read quotes in a chunk readers are strongly inspired to take a look at in its entirety). “Three years in the past I felt so distant and faraway from the sport, and actually at that time after getting DFA’d by the Cubs had misplaced all confidence. Simply type of needed to be away from the sport and thought I used to be performed. However as time went on, one thing in me simply wasn’t sitting proper and I needed to get again on the market and on the very least show to myself that I may nonetheless play, as a result of I believed that I may. And I’m glad I did and glad I caught it out.”
Mancini particulars the problem of chasing that remaining objective whereas leaving his spouse and younger daughter at dwelling. Happily, the 2 had been in attendance for his return to the majors. Suiting up one final time with them within the stands “made all of it price it” ultimately, per Mancini, including that he “by no means in one million years” thought when his daughter was born in 2025 that he’d play an enormous league sport in entrance of her.
An eighth-round decide by the Orioles out of Notre Dame again in 2013, Mancini bought his first style of the majors in 2016 — a cup of espresso that maybe fittingly lasted the identical variety of video games (5) because the one he obtained in placing a bow on his profession with the 2026 Angels a decade later. He clubbed three homers in solely 15 plate appearances throughout that rookie displaying, setting the stage for what the subsequent a number of years in Baltimore would maintain.
Mancini debuted on the tail finish of the Orioles’ run as a constant postseason contender within the American League East. All through the crew’s rebuild, he was a fixture within the coronary heart of their order and one of many crew’s finest total performers. He completed third place in 2017 Rookie of the Yr voting after batting .293/.338/.488 and belting 24 homers. Had he not occurred to be going up in opposition to a fellow rookie by the identify of Aaron Decide, Mancini and second-place finisher Andrew Benintendi would probably have been in a detailed race for the highest spot within the American League.
The righty-swinging Mancini slugged his means into the hearts of Orioles followers for the subsequent couple years. General, from 2016-19, he posted a .276/.335/.485 batting line with 86 homers, 88 doubles and 9 triples. That features a career-best 35-homer displaying with the 2019 O’s.
With the Orioles rebuilding underneath new entrance workplace management and quickly assembling a formidable crop of younger expertise, Mancini appeared like he is perhaps one of many group’s linchpins — a core participant who debuted simply because the rebuild started and noticed it by way of to the opposite facet. Life had different plans.
Early in spring coaching 2020, the Orioles introduced that Mancini can be leaving camp to bear an undisclosed medical process. Days later, Mancini and the crew introduced that medical doctors had not too long ago found a malignant tumor in his colon. He had instantly undergone surgical procedure to take away the expansion.
Seven weeks later, Mancini opened up in a poignant Participant’s Tribune piece titled “I Am So Fortunate,” detailing that he’d been recognized with Stage 3 colon most cancers simply weeks earlier than his twenty eighth birthday. (Once more, followers unfamiliar with Mancini’s story are extremely inspired to learn the complete piece.) Routine bloodwork carried out throughout that 12 months’s spring coaching revealed abnormally low iron ranges and prompted additional testing. Mancini hadn’t been feeling any signs. As he famous: “With out the Orioles I by no means would have caught this earlier than it could have been too late.”
Mancini started chemotherapy after his surgical procedure. Almost 9 months after the unique announcement from the crew, Mancini gave not simply Orioles followers however all baseball followers — who’d rallied behind him amid his life-altering analysis — the information they’d awaited. He was cancer-free. Alongside that announcement got here his declaration to be prepared for Opening Day 2021, and prepared he was. O’s followers welcomed Mancini again with a protracted standing ovation (YouTube hyperlink) — one which Mancini would say nonetheless induced goosebumps after the very fact.
Mancini returned to the sport with a 21-homer displaying for the 2021 Orioles, hitting .255/.326/.432 in 147 video games and 616 plate appearances. He took a nationwide stage that season not just by making his emotional return from life-threatening sickness, however having fun with a robust 12 months on the plate and collaborating within the 2021 Residence Run Derby. Mancini bested Matt Olson in Spherical 1 of the occasion and took down Trevor Story in Spherical 2 as he made all of it the way in which to the finals earlier than falling to present Orioles first baseman Pete Alonso. By season’s finish, there was little doubt in anybody’s thoughts: Mancini was named 2021’s AL Comeback Participant of the Yr.
Mancini posted related numbers by way of the primary half of the 2022 season in Baltimore for an O’s membership that also hadn’t fairly emerged from its organizational overhaul. As Mancini approached free company for the primary time, GM Mike Elias fielded commerce curiosity forward of the deadline and ultimately wound up sending Mancini to the 2022 Astros — with whom he received a World Collection ring.
That winter in free company, Mancini and the Cubs agreed to a two-year, $14MM contract — the second season being a participant possibility. Issues in Chicago didn’t go properly. Mancini hit solely .234/.299/.336 in 263 plate appearances as a Cub earlier than being minimize unfastened. Till this remaining run with the Angels, that had stood as his remaining stint within the majors.
All informed, Mancini will retire from baseball as a lifetime .263/.327/.448 hitter. He performed in 836 main league video games, took 3396 plate appearances, smacked 129 homers and 156 doubles, plated 404 runs and scored 408 occasions. He took dwelling about $33MM in wage alongside the way in which.
Extra importantly, the affable Mancini was a clubhouse chief, fan favourite and supply of inspiration to numerous onlookers each inside and outdoors the baseball world. His profession is one punctuated by the inconceivable — whether or not that’s an eighth-round decide carving out an eight-year profession as a clubhouse chief and beloved fan favourite, overcoming most cancers or making a mid-30s return to the diamond following an unceremonious launch in Chicago and an absence of practically three calendar years.
What’s subsequent for Mancini stays unclear. He tells Kubatko that he’d been doing a little public talking previous to engineering his newest comeback bid and teased a possible future in broadcasting. Mancini jokes that 34 is just too younger to be totally retired, quipping: “I can’t play that a lot tennis.”
Regardless of the playing cards maintain, Mancini has endlessly captured the adulation of Orioles followers and baseball followers at giant. Congrats to him on a fantastic profession, and finest needs to the Mancini household in Trey’s post-playing days.
