Trey Mancini: Role Player or Star?

[interloper]

I like the Werth comp. Mancini is sort of like what you'd hope Reimold had turned into and didn't, but with less speed. 

[Babypowder]

32 minutes ago, interloper said:

Fair enough, but I still think Trey is more selective and when he gets a pitch to hit, he hits it. He can also take pitches outside the other way with ease, something Trumbo struggles with. He's got less holes than Trumbo. He hits everything hard. He doesn't give away ABs. 

Trumbo and he swung at a nearly identical rate at balls outside the strike zone, Mancini slightly higher. Trumbo has more power, less batting average. I think it's quite a good comp for future value. Above average bat for COF, but below average defense. Likely average defense at 1B, but also average offense. The total package being around league average. That's what prime Trumbo was.

[Babypowder]

16 minutes ago, interloper said:

I like the Werth comp. Mancini is sort of like what you'd hope Reimold had turned into and didn't, but with less speed. 

Mancini has almost a 0 percent chance of having Werth's plate discipline or defensive value. 

[Just Regular]

He'll be an interesting experiment to the 10000 hours of practice theory.  Over the next couple years, he'll be one of the few young-ish ballplayers parked in LF, with more coaching and practice at the job than just about anyone.  If he can get really good at the parts of the job that aren't just foot speed (which admittedly is a really big chunk of it), maybe he can push closer to average.

It'll help if Willie Calhoun gets to become part of his peer group.

[Ruzious]

Very good article!  Interesting idea to change his swing to add loft.  I get the impression that he's a student of the game and will do anything (legal) to improve, so that's the kind of thing I'd guess he'd be working on.  He already showed an impressive ability to go to the opposite field.  Adding some loft will get some more balls to "sneak" over the fence and improve his power numbers.  

[interloper]

13 minutes ago, Babypowder said:

Mancini has almost a 0 percent chance of having Werth's plate discipline or defensive value. 

I mean Werth is listed as a comp for him in the article. 

Werth didn't get to over 2 oWAR until his 6th season in the league. Trey did it in his second. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I don't see why Trey can't have a few 5 WAR seasons in him, which is all that Werth topped out at. 

[Babypowder]

20 minutes ago, interloper said:

I mean Werth is listed as a comp for him in the article. 

Werth didn't get to over 2 oWAR until his 6th season in the league. Trey did it in his second. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I don't see why Trey can't have a few 5 WAR seasons in him, which is all that Werth topped out at. 

Bad plate discipline, and below average defense are why he probably won't be able to do that.

Also, referencing 5 WAR seasons as "all he topped out at" is strange. 5 WAR is nothing short of excellent. I'd put the odds of Mancini having any 5 win seasons as extremely unlikely.

[interloper]

2 minutes ago, Babypowder said:

Bad plate discipline, and below average defense are why he probably won't be able to do that.

Also, referencing 5 WAR seasons as "all he topped out at" is strange. 5 WAR is nothing short of excellent. I'd put that odds of Mancini having any 5 win seasons as extremely unlikely.

Okey dokey. 

[Can_of_corn]

18 minutes ago, Ruzious said:

Very good article!  Interesting idea to change his swing to add loft.  I get the impression that he's a student of the game and will do anything (legal) to improve, so that's the kind of thing I'd guess he'd be working on.  He already showed an impressive ability to go to the opposite field.  Adding some loft will get some more balls to "sneak" over the fence and improve his power numbers.  

Tweaking the swing to add loft doesn't help everyone.  Just ask Jason Heyward.

[interloper]

Interesting how two guys can have a similar swing rate, but be totally different hitters. It's almost as if swing rate doesn't tell you the whole story.

[interloper]

Just now, Can_of_corn said:

Tweaking the swing to add loft doesn't help everyone.  Just ask Jason Heyward.

I like Trey for who he is. He's good! Doesn't seem like the change is causing him any trouble at least, so far. Still looks like the same guy up there this spring.

[FuManchu]

1 hour ago, Moose Milligan said:

How many average regular players hit .290 + with 20 homers?  Granted, he'd have to do it again and in this offensive heavy environment there's probably more players than I'm aware of. 

Jose Abreu
Jose Altuve
Elvis Andrus
Nolan Arenado
Charlie Blackmon
Kris Bryant
Zack Cozart
Freddie Freeman
Paul Goldschmidt
Marwin Gonzalez
Eric Hosmer
Trey Mancini
Daniel Murphy
Marcell Ozuna
Tommy Pham
Jose Ramirez
Anthony Rendon
Eddie Rosario
Jonathan Schoop
Corey Seager
Mike Trout
Justin Turner
Joey Votto
Ryan Zimmerman

[Babypowder]

1 hour ago, Moose Milligan said:

How many average regular players hit .290 + with 20 homers?  Granted, he'd have to do it again and in this offensive heavy environment there's probably more players than I'm aware of.  Sometimes my thinking reverts back to growing up in the early 90s when 20 homers was a big thing.

I think he can become an above average regular.  Not quite an all star but a really solid contributor for years to come.  Yes, he's headed into his age 26 season, but part of this is due to the fact that he played all 4 years at Notre Dame and, if I'm doing my math correctly, that he was a year older than most of the kids in his HS class.  But let's not pretend that he toiled in the minors for a long time, he progressed at a decent rate through the system and made his debut in 2016.  

At any rate, he was one of the few guys on the team last year that could give you a good at bat in a key situation.  He also seemed to be able to make adjustments (as the article points out) when pitchers adjust to him.  

Looking ahead for the next few years, I don't view Mancini as a problem, he's one of the solutions.  Granted, his defense isn't great and that might be able to get better but I'm envisioning a day where Davis is gone and Mancini is at 1st.  

 

It's hard for me to wrap my head around it for the same reason, but 20 homers is actually below the median number of homers among qualified hitters in 2017. It's weird to think of 23 homers as average power.

[Yardball85]

If we can get five more years of an .825 OPS and defense that doesn't kill us, he will be short of star but above role player.  A poor man's Ryan Braun perhaps? or  poor man's Jason Bay before he signed with the Mets, which is a good thing to have for cheap.

[interloper]

I like how Trey sorta looks like a 12 year old kid in the body of a 27 year old. You ever watch him in the outfield? He's fidgeting and looking awkward and you're like "this guy is a major leaguer?" and then he makes a nice play out there and comes to the plate and rockets a bomb into dead center. 

I like Trey. 

Trey Dongz.