Trey Mancini Battling Colon Cancer, May Miss Season

The MLB season is still in limbo though there is growing optimism as to the fact that we will see action on the diamond this season. While the fact remains that we don’t know when things are going to get back to normal, the fact that there’s something positive to lean on is a plus. On the flip side of that equation, there are inevitably things that crop up that no one could have ever predicted would take place. The unpredictability and uncertainty that comes with life made another unscheduled appearance this week and it directly affects what will take place, especially for one AL East team.

Last season, the Baltimore Orioles were a train wreck, finishing the season 54-108 and solidly entrenched in the basement of the AL East. One of the brightest spots on the team in 2019 was Trey Mancini, who played 154 games and posted a .291/.364/.535 slash line over the course of 679 plate appearances. He cracked 38 doubles, slammed 35 homers, scored 106 runs and drove in 97 on the year. Mancini finished with 3.5 WAR and seemed primed to be a key cog in the middle of the Orioles lineup as they attempt to come back to some sort of relevance in the competitive AL East this season.

Instead, it looks like Baltimore will be without his services this season, regardless of when baseball comes back to the horizon. In a story that he wrote for the Players Tribune this week, Mancini announced that he was recovering from stage 3 colon cancer and was undergoing chemotherapy in Baltimore. He is expected to have to go through six months of chemo, likely ruling him out for the 2020 campaign. It’s a tough blow for the Orioles and a major hit to Mancini and his health, especially in the current health environment and the COVID-19 pandemic running wild across the globe at this stage.

Mancini found out that his iron levels were low in spring training and they were lower after a second blood test. He underwent an endoscopy and a colonoscopy on March 6 that revealed a malignant tumor in his colon. After that was diagnosed, he underwent surgery to remove it on March 12. Mancini stated that he had a mediport implanted in his chest earlier this month, where the medications for the chemotherapy will be run through his body. He started chemo on April 13 and is expected to have treatment every two weeks for six months, which means he likely had his second session or is slated to do so this week.

Mancini, in his article, said that the support he has received has been overwhelming. “Really, the support I've gotten from everyone has just been unbelievable. It's given me an appreciation for a lot of things that I've always had, but that were getting overlooked as I went about my day-to-day life. Going through something like this had really made me understand all my blessings."

We get so caught up in batting averages, home runs, stolen bases, strikeouts, saves, wins and losses that sometimes we overlook the bigger picture. Those players that we see on television, who wear the jerseys of our favorite team and who seem larger than life are really just human beings just like the rest of us. While they have tremendous athletic ability, they have to deal with the same issues that the rest of us do: be it strained relationships, traffic, screwed up take-out orders and, of course, health problems. Sometimes we badly overlook the fact that the people we watch and idolize to some extent have to deal with things just like everyone else.

We wish Mancini the best in his recovery from this devastating diagnosis. It’s not all that common to see a 27-year-old major league player in his prime end up in the hospital with such a serious injury that had no real cause of their own. One can only hope that Mancini can get back to full health and doing what he loves to do: playing baseball. Whether that is 2020, 2021 or whenever, his health is paramount and a reminder to all of us how fragile life can be, especially in the current environs that we live in.