Baltimore Orioles: Ranking The Likely Trade Candidates

The Baltimore Orioles should trade Trey Mancini.

Section336 co-host and Birds Watcher contributor Josh Sroka wrote last week about Trey Mancini’s place in this rebuild for the Baltimore Orioles. Josh’s thoughts on Mancini were that the team should take full advantage of his scorching start and trade the 28-year-old outfielder/first baseman/designated hitter.

Just the other day, BaltimoreBaseball.com’s Rich Dubroff expressed his belief that the Orioles should extend Mancini and make him the face of the franchise. His piece would have been fine, except for his comment about comparing Mancini’s Twitter usage to that of Adam Jones and his “controversial” uses of social media. That comment irked me, tremendously, but I’ll leave it at that and say I respectfully disagree with the extend-Mancini crowd.

I love Trey Mancini and could not be happier about his hot start, especially after his struggles last season, but he will be on the wrong side of 30 by the time the Orioles are expected to begin contending and no other player on the active roster will bring back more value than him in a trade.

Mancini isn’t an outfielder and when Baltimore does finally move on from Chris Davis, Ryan Mountcastle is there, banging on the gates of Camden Yards for playing time. Even if the O’s stick with Davis (which I’m fine with while this team remains far away from contention), Mountcastle will force the hand of leadership very soon, in which case he likely splits time at 1B/DH with Davis, blocking Mancini.

The biggest positive for Mancini, and others on this list, is the extra years of control. The Orioles aren’t shopping around rentals like last year. Any bonus that increases the value of these guys is a plus.