The non-emotional reason why trading Trey Mancini shouldn't be a priority for the Orioles

I went to Tuesday's game trying to find clarity on the Trey Mancini situation, and found little. It mostly came in realizing that if the Orioles want to make a move, real value may be elsewhere.

I watched with awe as Anthony Santander hit a ball that seemed like it barely got off the ground into the Orioles’ bullpen. I chuckled at how bad Randy Arozarena looked against Jorge Lopez once the Orioles created a save situation for him with their eighth-inning rally. 

I was at Camden Yards Tuesday covering a full game for the first time in a long time and I wanted to try and use the experience to calcify an opinion about the prospect of this potentially being Trey Mancini’s last week as an Oriole.

I sought some kind of counter to the emotions the idea stirs up, which run against the dogmatic value-driven operation the Orioles have become. I hoped I’d be able to come away thinking fans were being too precious about the possibility and that it would be better for both the player and the team to move him now. I realized I was thinking too small. 

The Orioles have an opportunity in the next week to make the kind of major, franchise-altering trades that minimally impact their present while meaningfully improving their future, and I’m not sure moving Mancini accomplishes either of those things. Santander and Lopez can do both in the trade market, and that should be their priority. 

This isn’t to say Mancini should or shouldn’t be traded. One is too callous, the other too conforming. This is more the real-time realization that nothing about the process – worrying on the outside that it might happen, exploring and perhaps executing a deal inside the Warehouse – even raises to the level of worth considering.

First, on the Mancini part. Most of the discourse around him stems from his pending free agency (mutual option notwithstanding) and the idea that, in a week or in two months, his time as an Oriole is drawing to a close. Trading him now would allow the organization to get at least something in return, and there’s certainly going to be some interest in a couple inexpensive months of a solid offensive performer.

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The list of recent Orioles traded in-season as pending free agents is short, but still longer than the one of players who actually reach free agency. None of those dealt — Andrew Cashner, Tommy Milone, or Freddy Galvis — garnered a substantial return, and when we talk about trading Mancini, the idea of it being worth it is totally different.

I can’t sit here and say emotion shouldn’t have anything to do with it. I’m not a fan, but an indelible moment of my journalism career was when I sat in my rental car outside Fresh Kitchen in Sarasota tearing up during a phone interview as a Hopkins doctor explained to me the severity of needing surgery for a tumor on a colon the way Mancini did. I have felt more covering him than one should allow themselves to or admit to, and yet I don’t feel like that should factor into what the Orioles decide to do in trading him.

Anyone who has cared about the Orioles for the duration of Mancini’s career has no such pull to neutrality or objectivity. They’d probably just be bummed out by it, which isn’t exactly the kind of feeling a team should be eliciting when they’re playing their best baseball in a half-decade and finally rewarding those same folks’ patience. 

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It’s not the front office’s job, ultimately, to worry about that. They’ve spent three-plus years making popular and unpopular decisions in the name of a sustainable contender, and did so by taking a small chance of value when the alternative was none at all.

This just isn’t the time for that. They’ll always seek value at the margins via waiver claims and the like, but are now at the stage where they can seek impact over incremental improvements. I don’t think it’s diminishing to say that the idea of trading Mancini now won’t produce the kind of value that will make it worth it. Truthfully, the time for that passed back in 2019 when he was the best hitter on a terrible team and had three years remaining before free agency.

It would have been a tough sell, but that would have been the time to do it, and even absent his illness that would have been the case. Waiting too long on such a thing can be dangerous, and the Orioles can’t run that risk with Lopez and Santander. They’d be slightly diminished in the near-term, but not cripplingly so. 

Kyle Stowers’s major league opportunity can come that way and likely keep the Orioles’ lineup lengthened with his presence, and the club should be confident in their ability to backfill the closer role given the group’s depth and quality. That each player has two-plus years left before free agency means a lot to teams that fancy themselves contenders this year and into the future, as they’ll be able to count on contributions from Lopez and Santander in the seasons to come.

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The Orioles’ high valuations of their players will probably in these cases be valid. If teams meet them, they shouldn’t think twice about moving these types of key contributors. Lowering that valuation because of pending free agency in Mancini’s case isn’t really going to serve their cause. 

Making big moves will. They are already a team with solutions on the horizon at many of their areas of deficiency. They also have options at positions of strength to trade from them if they so choose. 

I’ve come to believe Mike Elias will more often than not the Orioles will breadcrumb the decisions they’re going to make before they do them, and most of Elias’ public comments about the deadline have been about the global view, meaning they’re looking beyond a particular player or winning month or season. That leads me to believe these Orioles, as impressive as they’ve been of late, won’t be intact this time next week.

Mancini’s contract status puts him right at the center of that. So be it. With the potential to make bigger moves and avoid missing out on peak value in other areas of the roster, he just shouldn’t be at the front of the line.