The O’s have less than a month to decide what to do with their best offensive player.
Despite an impressive series win over the Cleveland Indians last weekend — in which they outscored the Tribe 26-2 en route to taking two out of three games — The Baltimore Orioles have been a dreadful baseball team in 2019.
How dreadful are they? Let’s count the ways: they rank last in the majors in starters ERA, second-to-last in relievers ERA, 26th in Weighted Runs Created Plus (wRC+), 27th in OPS, 28th in Defensive Runs Saved (DRS), and have the worst run differential.
Coming off a franchise-worst 115 losses last season, no one expected this team to finish anywhere close to the top of the American League standings this year, but it hasn’t made their 24-60 record and 31 game deficit in the AL East standings, as of July 2, any more palatable.
One of few bright spots on an otherwise dim season has been the performance of outfielder/first baseman/designated hitter Trey Mancini. As the only consistent offensive threat on the roster, Mancini has posted career-highs in batting average (.302), On-base Percentage (.359), Slugging Percentage (.542), On-base Plus Slugging (OPS) (.901), On-base Plus Slugging Plus (OPS+) (138) and wRC+ (135), not counting his five-game September audition in 2016. He’s already eclipsed his career-best 1.7 fWAR (FanGraphs Wins Above Replacement) with 1.8 through 78 games this year.
On a team devoid of much Major League talent, Mancini has shone despite opposing pitchers having no real reason to pitch to him. With that sort of production on a team going nowhere except to the top of next year’s draft boards and with a farm system still in need of reinforcements, perhaps the team should listen to some trade offers for the 27-year-old ahead of the July 31 trade deadline.
Of course, there are two schools of thought when it comes to this topic. There’s the camp who believes that the team should strike while the iron is hot and trade Mancini now and there are those who think that the homegrown star should stay put and give the fans a reason to come to the ballpark.
There’s plenty of merit to the latter point. After all, baseball is an entertainment product first and foremost and for a team as bad as the Orioles are, the little enjoyment they provide comes from having at least one player who doesn’t play as though he was plucked from Eutaw Street and handed a contract on the spot.
But have Mancini’s 4.3 plate appearances per night really made the moribund Birds more enjoyable to watch? If last year’s television ratings and their putrid attendance — second-to-last in the AL — are any indications, the answer is no.
While fans will fill stadiums for transcendent players — the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, who employ Mike Trout, rank second in the AL in attendance, for instance — team quality is still the main driver of fan interest, and Mancini doesn’t have a flashy enough game to offset that.
Sure, Mancini has broken through as a hitter, but his value on that end is muted by his negligible baserunning — FanGraphs’ Base Running (BsR) metric puts him at -0.1 — and rancid defense (-8 DRS as an outfielder, though his D at first base is much easier to swallow). And even his offensive surge has been propped up by a .339 BABIP, though his Statcast numbers are more reflective of a guy who is seeing the ball well and hammering mistakes.
In total, Mancini is a good-but-not-great player, and in a sport where even the most dominant position players have a minuscule effect on the game’s outcome, it behooves the Orioles to get what they can for him while his value is at its peak.
O’s general manager Mike Elias cannot make the same mistakes his predecessor, Dan Duquette, did with the likes of Manny Machado and Jonathan Schoop. Instead of trading those two, and a few others, while they still had a couple years of team control left and when it became clear that the Orioles’ contention window was sealed shut, Duquette elected to give it one more go with the core that won the most games in the AL between 2012-16.
We all know how that went: the team cratered and devolved into the worst team in baseball and once it was time to trade the veterans away, the return wasn’t as robust since teams are often loathe to part with top-level prospects for a three-month rental.
Following this season, Mancini will enter his first year of salary arbitration. While he’s sure to receive a significant bump in pay next year, it wouldn’t be an amount that would scare off potential suitors.
These days especially, most MLB owners clasp onto their wallets as if their holding a dead man’s switch, using the arbitration system and minor league rules to keep the majority of the profits in their pockets, so surrendering a bit of capital for a player who can give your offense a boost with an additional three years of production on the cheap is chum for these penny-pinching sharks.
This doesn’t mean that the O’s will get a treasure trove of elite prospects if they trade Mancini away before the July 31 trade deadline; even with his numbers, he isn’t good enough to net that sort of return.
Whether or not he gets traded will also depend on how badly teams want his services. His unsightly outfield defense all but eliminates any National League teams. And even in an AL that has the benefits of the DH rule, teams are a bit reticent to invest in a player who offers little aside from his bat. This could impact whether Mancini gets traded at all, let alone the package the O’s could get as compensation for him.
But they have to try and get something for him. Even with their moves last year and the selection of phenom catcher Adley Rutschman with the number one overall pick in last month’s draft, they still have a ways to go before their minor league ranks are fully replenished. To truly accelerate this rebuild, they need to continue to stockpile young talent and moving the best asset they have. The return could be modest, but it could lead to future successes that supersede the handful of wins Mancini is helping this holdover team get now.
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