Veteran first baseman Trey Mancini tells Roch Kubatko of MASNsports.com that he’s decided to retire after playing in parts of eight major league seasons with the Orioles, Cubs, Astros and Angels. The 34-year-old appeared in five games with the Halos earlier this year, completing his goal of making it back for one last appearance in The Show after a nearly three-year layoff.
“I think I knew over the last few years that I could still make it back up, and that was the main goal,” Mancini tells Kubtako (one of many must-read quotes in a piece readers are strongly encouraged to check out in its entirety). “Three years ago I felt so far away and removed from the game, and really at that point after getting DFA’d by the Cubs had lost all confidence. Just kind of wanted to be away from the game and thought I was done. But as time went on, something in me just wasn’t sitting right and I wanted to get back out there and at the very least prove to myself that I could still play, because I thought that I could. And I’m glad I did and glad I stuck it out.”
Mancini details the difficulty of chasing that final goal while leaving his wife and young daughter at home. Fortunately, the two were in attendance for his return to the majors. Suiting up one last time with them in the stands “made it all worth it” in the end, per Mancini, adding that he “never in a million years” thought when his daughter was born in 2025 that he’d play a big league game in front of her.
An eighth-round pick by the Orioles out of Notre Dame back in 2013, Mancini got his first taste of the majors in 2016 — a cup of coffee that perhaps fittingly lasted the same number of games (five) as the one he received in putting a bow on his career with the 2026 Angels a decade later. He clubbed three homers in only 15 plate appearances during that rookie showing, setting the stage for what the next several years in Baltimore would hold.
Mancini debuted on the tail end of the Orioles’ run as a consistent postseason contender in the American League East. Throughout the team’s rebuild, he was a fixture in the heart of their order and one of the team’s best overall performers. He finished third place in 2017 Rookie of the Year voting after batting .293/.338/.488 and belting 24 homers. Had he not happened to be going up against a fellow rookie by the name of Aaron Judge, Mancini and second-place finisher Andrew Benintendi would likely have been in a close race for the top spot in the American League.
The righty-swinging Mancini slugged his way into the hearts of Orioles fans for the next couple years. Overall, from 2016-19, he posted a .276/.335/.485 batting line with 86 homers, 88 doubles and nine triples. That includes a career-best 35-homer showing with the 2019 O’s.
With the Orioles rebuilding under new front office leadership and rapidly assembling an impressive crop of young talent, Mancini looked like he might be one of the organization’s linchpins — a core player who debuted just as the rebuild began and saw it through to the other side. Life had other plans.
Early in spring training 2020, the Orioles announced that Mancini would be leaving camp to undergo an undisclosed medical procedure. Days later, Mancini and the team announced that doctors had recently discovered a malignant tumor in his colon. He had immediately undergone surgery to remove the growth.
Seven weeks later, Mancini opened up in a poignant Player’s Tribune piece titled “I Am So Lucky,” detailing that he’d been diagnosed with Stage 3 colon cancer just weeks before his 28th birthday. (Again, fans unfamiliar with Mancini’s story are highly encouraged to read the entire piece.) Routine bloodwork performed during that year’s spring training revealed abnormally low iron levels and prompted further testing. Mancini hadn’t been feeling any symptoms. As he noted: “Without the Orioles I never would have caught this before it may have been too late.”
Mancini began chemotherapy after his surgery. Nearly nine months after the original announcement from the team, Mancini gave not just Orioles fans but all baseball fans — who’d rallied behind him amid his life-altering diagnosis — the news they’d awaited. He was cancer-free. Alongside that announcement came his declaration to be ready for Opening Day 2021, and ready he was. O’s fans welcomed Mancini back with a prolonged standing ovation (YouTube link) — one that Mancini would say still induced goosebumps after the fact.
Mancini returned to the game with a 21-homer showing for the 2021 Orioles, hitting .255/.326/.432 in 147 games and 616 plate appearances. He took a national stage that season not simply by making his emotional return from life-threatening illness, but enjoying a strong year at the plate and participating in the 2021 Home Run Derby. Mancini bested Matt Olson in Round 1 of the event and took down Trevor Story in Round 2 as he made it all the way to the finals before falling to current Orioles first baseman Pete Alonso. By season’s end, there was little doubt in anyone’s mind: Mancini was named 2021’s AL Comeback Player of the Year.
Mancini posted similar numbers through the first half of the 2022 season in Baltimore for an O’s club that still hadn’t quite emerged from its organizational overhaul. As Mancini approached free agency for the first time, GM Mike Elias fielded trade interest ahead of the deadline and eventually wound up sending Mancini to the 2022 Astros — with whom he won a World Series ring.
That winter in free agency, Mancini and the Cubs agreed to a two-year, $14MM contract — the second season being a player option. Things in Chicago didn’t go well. Mancini hit only .234/.299/.336 in 263 plate appearances as a Cub before being cut loose. Until this final run with the Angels, that had stood as his final stint in the majors.
All told, Mancini will retire from baseball as a lifetime .263/.327/.448 hitter. He played in 836 major league games, took 3396 plate appearances, smacked 129 homers and 156 doubles, plated 404 runs and scored 408 times. He took home about $33MM in salary along the way.
More importantly, the affable Mancini was a clubhouse leader, fan favorite and source of inspiration to countless onlookers both inside and outside the baseball world. His career is one punctuated by the improbable — whether that’s an eighth-round pick carving out an eight-year career as a clubhouse leader and beloved fan favorite, overcoming cancer or making a mid-30s return to the diamond following an unceremonious release in Chicago and an absence of nearly three calendar years.
What’s next for Mancini remains unclear. He tells Kubatko that he’d been doing some public speaking prior to engineering his latest comeback bid and teased a potential future in broadcasting. Mancini jokes that 34 is too young to be fully retired, quipping: “I can’t play that much tennis.”
Whatever the cards hold, Mancini has forever captured the adulation of Orioles fans and baseball fans at large. Congrats to him on a fine career, and best wishes to the Mancini family in Trey’s post-playing days.
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