SARASOTA, FLA | Orioles outfielder Trey Mancini grew up in Florida as a Tampa Bay Rays fan, but playing in Camden Yards last year — his breakout rookie season — felt very familiar.
Mancini’s mother, Beth, grew up in Bowie and graduated from Elizabeth Seton High School in Bladensburg. As a young boy, Mancini would make the trek from Florida with his parents — his father is a doctor in Winter Haven — to see his grandmother in Bowie and other relatives in the region.
“I went to a lot of Orioles games,” Mancini said.
The 26-year-old slugger was called up at the end of the 2016 season and hit his first big league homer at Camden Yards. His mother was in the stands and her reaction was caught by television cameras.
“It wasn’t just that homer. For a mom, it was 24 years of what he had gone through to get that point,” Beth Mancini told Pressbox Sports.
Trey Mancini proved last year he was more than a one-hit wonder, finishing third in the voting for Rookie of the Year honors after playing in 147 games and hitting .293 with 24 homers and 78 RBIs.
“It gives you confidence, but you don’t want to get content in any sense,” Mancini said recently, while standing by his locker during spring training at Ed Smith Stadium. “You don’t want to think that everything is going your way. You have to put it in your mind you are competing for a spot.”
What made his season even more impressive is that Mancini had to adjust to playing left field after he came up through the Orioles system as a first baseman.
Mancini has learned a lot from Virginia native Wayne Kirby, the first base coach for the Orioles who also works with outfielders.
“He is fantastic. I have the best possible instructor with him,” Mancini said. “(Former Oriole outfielder) Brady Anderson has helped me, too. Every pitch, still to this day, I look at (Kirby) and he switches me around. He is on top of it. With him I feel very comfortable out there because he is there to help me out.”
Mancini spent part of the past offseason living near Logan Circle in Washington and worked out at Georgetown University with Michael Leonard, an assistant athletic trainer with the Hoyas basketball program.
Mancini’s ability to adapt has served him well.
While in college, he played for a summer league team in Massachusetts, a circuit for top college prospects that uses wood bats to help players prepare for pro ball.
“We had a ton of guys from that team who were drafted,” Mancini said. “We were pretty much a Cape Cod League team (in terms of caliber). We were ranked second among summer-league teams. We were really good. But we lost in the semifinals to Keene, New Hampshire.”
The general manager of his team in Massachusetts that year was Kirk Fredriksson, the GM of the team in 2011 and 2012.
“That was a pretty good group of kids we had that summer,” Frediksson said.
And the connection proved beneficial as Frediksson became a scout for the Baltimore Orioles in 2012 and he was instrumental in the scouting and drafting of Mancini out of Notre Dame in 2013.
Mancini was promoted to Double-A Bowie Baysox after a hot start at the high Single-A Frederick Keys in 2015. Coming up through the minors in Maryland, he’s always had relatives in the stands, watching watch his games in person.
One of the biggest challenges in the majors, Mancini said, is dealing with ticket requests.
“It is hard to leave 10 tickets a game,” he said. “That adds up.”
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