In some ways, the months of September and October were the most difficult of Trey Mancini’s professional baseball career.
He’d been traded from the rapidly improving Orioles — the organization that drafted him, and where he’d become a team leader, then an inspiration after missing a season while fighting stage 3 colon cancer — to the Astros. In Baltimore, there was a sense of anticipation about what the team was becoming. In Houston, the expectations were much weightier: Nothing but a World Series championship would suffice.
On the latest episode of “The Adam Jones Podcast,” available wherever you get your podcasts, Mancini reflected on joining a new club, saying he felt like a rookie for the first few days. He did contribute at the plate, hitting eight home runs in the regular season, but eventually found himself mired in a horrible “all-time” slump, hitting .208 in August and .148 in September and October.
“Just couldn’t get it figured out,” he said. Mancini had been brought in to platoon with Yuli Gurriel at first base, but ultimately became a reserve as Gurriel surged in the postseason.
You probably know the rest. Mancini would unexpectedly make one of the most important defensive plays of the World Series, saving Game 5, then come through with a hit in Game 6 as the Astros did, in fact, win the World Series.
“Still kinda on a high from everything that happened the last few days,” Mancini told Jones and co-host Jerry Coleman. “Feeling great, feeling healthy — thank God — over two years now since I finished up chemo. ... Feeling great in that regard.”
Here are three clips from the interview that you shouldn’t miss.
How good can the Orioles be?
Here, Mancini is confirming a lot of what you probably suspected:
- Adley Rutschman is special.
- Gunnar Henderson has huge potential.
- The young pitchers are ready to take another step.
- Everyone is wondering what Orioles GM Mike Elias will do this offseason.
The quote that stands out comes toward the end, where Mancini reflects on how the Astros talked about facing the Orioles.
“Everybody on the Astros was saying Baltimore probably gave us the biggest fit in the regular season this year,” he said. “They’re pesky, and they’ve got dudes.”
‘I was basically trying to be like a hockey goalie’
The next time a team unloads picks and prospects to pick up a veteran player, there’s a good chance that fans will talk about Mancini’s ability to calmly enter a high-pressure situation and make a play. That’s exactly why a championship contender would mortgage some of the future for a player like Mancini.
Mancini figured he would be called upon to hit at some point late in the World Series, but not to play in the field.
“I was not expecting to use my glove very much in the playoffs,” he said.
Then Gurriel injured his knee.
“Whenever you go into a game like that the ball is going to find you almost immediately,” he said.
It did, off the bat of one of the hardest hitters in the game, Kyle Scwharber.
“Luckily, everything happened too fast for me to even think,” Mancini said of the play. “I was basically trying to be like a hockey goalie and keep the ball somewhere in the vicinity where I could at least pick it up and touch the bag. Luckily I caught it and made the play.”
Mancini will ‘always be an Oriole’ but is realistic about a possible return
Mancini heard from many ex-teammates and coaches after the World Series win, and he knows there will be questions about whether he might return to the team as a free agent (the Astros declined a $10 million option to keep him next year).
Here, he discusses the roster logjam that will probably prevent him from returning, but praised the organization for how his time ended.
“They just have so many young guys coming up that need to play,” he said. “I don’t know if it would be the best fit, and if not, that’s OK. I’m always going to be an Oriole. I’ll probably always be known as an Oriole. Just absolutely loved my time there and I loved how things ended between the organization and I. I couldn’t have dreamt it being better.”
To which Jones replied: “Oh, good for you. Mine was a little different.” (You can hear more on that in Episode 1.)
Mancini, who is engaged to marry former MASN reporter Sara Perlman during the offseason, said he is “good to go anywhere” next season.
It turns out Mancini has somehow never been hit with a pie by Jones
Jones was renowned for hitting teammates in the face with a pie during their postgame interviews, and Coleman assumed it had happened at some point to Mancini.
But it never did.
“I never got pied, and it was like my goal to get pied because it wasn’t shaving cream, they were actual pies as we all know,” Mancini said. “I absolutely love pie so I was just praying for a free key lime pie in the face.”
(Ok, so this clip is just meant to show you the time Coleman got pie-demolished by Jones while shooting a promo in our office. It’s worth it, though. Mancini called it, “The best one I’ve ever seen.”)
