Last year at this time, if you would’ve asked me about Trey Mancini, I would’ve told you he was a great lounge singer in the Pacific Northwest who wore the winter fragrance, Eskimo’s Breath made with real Rumplemintz. Now, brucely, I’m shocked I’m writing this post. I figured he’d be priced correctly in 2018 drafts, and no longer a sleeper. Two players’ stats for last year: 65/24/78/.293/1 and 94/10/62/.273/15. The runs are nice for the 2nd player, but we know runs and RBIs are more about ABs, lineup placement and team offense around said player. 15 steals are decent, but 10 homers are terrible in the Era of the Super Ball, and a .273 average is serious bleh. Which two players is that? Well, you know one is Trey Mancini. Any guesses who the 2nd player is? I hear someone say Cesar Hernandez. Solid guess, but not right. Any one else? I hear someone say a 15th century Martin Prado. That’s way off. Okay, someone just guessed “Your mother,” which is just rude. The 2nd player is Xander Bogaerts. Different position than Mancini, obviously, but also being drafted about sixty spots before Mancini. So, what can we expect from Trey Mancini for 2018 fantasy baseball and what makes him a sleeper?
First, Trey Mancini hits easy bombs:
Not only are all his strokes that easy. He has an easy stroke to all fields. His spray chart looks like what they teach hairdressers in cosmetology school for applying Aqua Net. Right field, left field and center field and an easy stroke to each. He commands a stroika. With all the strikeouts mounting across major league baseball, batting average seems to be a lost art like men getting away with sexual improprieties. Mancini’s ground balls (51%) are a little concerning. Digging into the grounders like a mothereffin’ beaver yielded some positivity. He hit 74% of grounders for either medium or hard contact, and hit for a .322 average on grounders. Jose Altuve ‘only’ hit .339 on grounders. Mancini’s not stereotypically fast, but his 21 infield hits, 11th best in the majors, shows he’s not flat-footed either. (Altuve led the majors with 30 infield hits.) The further down the Upside Down demogorgon hole, the more you see that Mancini is a hitter who looks like he was anything but a rookie. With men in scoring position, he hit .340. (Altuve hit .303; no, I don’t know why I keep comparing him to Altuve either. Okay, maybe I do know, because Mancini is a guy that should be a positive on average. Look at that, I figured out why I was mentioning Altuve after just a mere pause for a period. Now, if I could only figure out how to get out of this parenthetical. Oh, I know!) In 228 at-bats out of the five hole, Mancini hit .303. Hitting into the shift? He hit .500 in 26 ABs. If he can lower his strikeout rate (23.7%) to the teens (as it was in the minors), Mancini is going to challenge for many batting titles. All of that, and he’s going to hit at least 25 homers. For 2018, I’ll give Trey Mancini the projections of 79/27/91/.297/2 in 567 ABs with a chance for more.