Baltimore Orioles: Three Really Fun, Early Offensive Stats For The Birds

The season is young, but here are three fun stats from Baltimore Orioles’ hitters to start the 2019 season.

When the 2019 Baltimore Orioles lose a baseball game, they really lose a baseball game (see their second series against the New York Yankees or one of their three losses against the Oakland A’s), but when they win, it provides one pleasant evening of fun baseball for fans to enjoy in year one of the rebuild.

Back-to-back series wins on the road against American League East foes was a pretty unbelievable moment in these first two weeks of the season. Davis Hess taking a no-hitter deep into a game against the Toronto Blue Jays was another. And how about the blazing speed of Cedric Mullins and Richie Martin on Monday night when they combined for three triples in one night?

There have been a lot of unbelievable and surprising moments through the first two-plus weeks of the season. Here are three individual offensive statistics that have shocked us all, aren’t flukes, and should make for an interesting 2019.

Trey Mancini has been a force for the Baltimore Orioles.

Trey Mancini is making the art of hitting look pretty easy. He’s been quoted numerous times as saying his hot start has a lot to do not overthinking each at-bat, a simple, yet extremely complicated task.

You hear about it during the game broadcasts, how Mancini has stopped trying to cover the entire plate and is instead waiting for his pitch to be delivered where he wants it. Fastball comes in on the outside part of the plate? Mancini sends it the other way for an opposite-field home run. He looks confident at the plate and his numbers are showing that.

Thursday’s 0-4 with a strikeout performance against Oakland was the first time all season Mancini was kept off the basepaths. During his 12-game stretch to start the year, Mancini recorded five multi-hit games and found himself near the top of the leaderboards in several offensive categories.

As of Thursday, Mancini has a 216 wRC+, good for 7th best in the major leagues, behind the likes of Mike Trout (288), Cody Bellinger (249), Pete Alonso (230), and others.

He’s hitting .333 with six home runs, two doubles, 12 runs driven in, a .392 ISO, and .725 slugging percentage. Only Bellinger, Khris Davis, and Jay Bruce have more home runs than Mancini.  His expected stats are a close match to his actual stats, meaning this isn’t a lucky streak. The 27-year-old OF/DH is putting barrel to baseball, keeping the ball off the ground, selectively swinging at his pitches, and has been effective at limiting the strikeouts (currently under 20%).

In his impressive rookie season, Mancini finished with a 1.7 fWAR, following it up with a -0.2 mark in a season that saw his offensive production dip, across the board (minus matching his 24 home runs and slightly increasing his walk rate). In just 13 games this season, Mancini is worth 0.8 fWAR.

These numbers may not be sustainable, however, nothing shows that Mancini is experiencing a lucky streak that will come crashing down at any moment. His numbers will obviously stabilize over the next few weeks, but will likely continue to be a better version of Trey Mancini than we have ever seen.