CHICAGO — It’s funny how baseball sits, then stirs, such that the friendly face of a rebuilding franchise can spend years patiently plodding toward better and then find himself hurled across the country just as better arrives.
Trey Mancini will always be proud of the Orioles. Even as an Astro.
“It was weird looking in the mirror and seeing a different logo on my hat,” Mancini said. “But I looked at Vázquez, and it looked even weirder because he was in Boston even longer than I was in Baltimore.”
So Trey Mancini, Astro, is settling in just fine, all things considered. He owns an .831 on-base-plus-slugging percentage and three homers in 11 games, already has had fans clamoring for Manager Dusty Baker to play him more and needed just a few consecutive on-time starts to realize the merits of playing at a home stadium blessed with a roof. The Astros lead the American League West. He is almost certain to get his first chance at a deep October run.
But while trading Mancini seemed like something of a white flag for the Orioles, they have continued winning since, clinging to their role as the unlikeliest lurkers on the outskirts of the AL wild-card race. They entered Tuesday 8-4 since the deal, 1½ games behind the Toronto Blue Jays for the final wild-card spot. They are, after years of plodding, distinctly ahead of schedule.
“Mike [Elias] and Sig [Mejdal], what they’ve done in a few years, especially what they inherited going into 2019, it was not the most ideal roster and the minor league system was not great. They turned them both around in three years, which was not easy to do,” Mancini said. “I thought it might have taken another year or two to see tangible results. But I’m really proud of the guys there, what we built there this year — even though I’m not there anymore, at a distance, I’m always proud of them.”
Now, a little removed, with the perspective that comes with playing for another organization can offer, Mancini admits he didn’t know the Orioles would be so good so soon. But he did feel something different at the beginning of the season, before the waiver-wire bullpen came together to be one of the league’s best, before he felt the full clubhouse impact of veteran signees Rougned Odor and Robinson Chirinos and Jordan Lyles — even before the Orioles turned another demoralizing spring into a magical winning summer.
“A lot of guys got valuable years of experience and growing pains, I would say,” Mancini said. “Coming into this year, guys were a little more established, a little more bona fide major leaguers. Instead of trying to stay there, everybody knows they belong there. And the collective attitude of the team changed because of that.”
Indeed, other than Odor, Chirinos and Lyles, the Orioles’ 2022 run has been built largely on the same players who engineered their 110-loss season the previous year. Ryan Mountcastle, Austin Hays, Anthony Santander, Cedric Mullins, Jorge Mateo and Ramón Urías all played significant innings during that brutal season. Dean Kremer, Dillon Tate, Bruce Zimmermann and Spenser Watkins all threw plenty of innings. That year, their efforts didn’t add up to much of anything. This year, they have kept the Orioles competitive in the game’s deepest division.
“There has to be an inner belief that you belong. If there’s any doubt, you get eaten alive at this level. So you just have to have a little bit of success and almost build confidence in yourself even if you don’t have reason to be confident,” Mancini said. “That helps you stay in the big leagues. And a lot of those guys have that now.”
Mancini was a part of those losing teams, too, the same friendly face, the same steady presence. He had a .758 OPS and 21 homers in 2021 and finished second in the Home Run Derby, a perfectly respectable season. When the Orioles traded him, he was on pace to finish with fewer homers and a lower OPS in 2022, though not by much. But he felt different this year, too.
“I got past a lot of what happened to me, too. On a personal level in 2021, I don’t think I was quite [myself] — for good reason,” said Mancini, who missed the 2020 season fighting colon cancer, which was discovered by team doctors. “But I was preoccupied with media requests every day, my own health, scared of cancer coming back. That took my focus off baseball. I was much more my old self this year, too.”
Mancini’s deal includes an option for next season, though he and the Astros both would have to agree for him to stay. Options such as those are rarely exercised by both parties, which is why Mancini knew the Orioles — even if they finally plan to spend in free agency next winter as Elias, Baltimore’s general manager, recently said they do — could trade him at the deadline. He made more than the other players. They have young guys coming up who can play his position and offer more flexibility. They are loaded with young talent and want to clear the way.
So here is Trey Mancini, Houston Astro, as weird as that is. And there are the Baltimore Orioles, downright in contention, as strange as that may be. And on they both go, separately now, knowing how much they achieved together and how far both have to go.
“This is what we were working for in Baltimore,” Mancini said, motioning around the Astros’ clubhouse, where José Altuve lounged on a couch and Justin Verlander discussed Cy Young chances with reporters, both so accustomed to contention that it is part of the routine. “What you have here is kind of the end result of all that.”
Source: WP
