Trey Mancini diagnosed with cancer
While the rest of the baseball world is trying to figure out how to get back to playing regular season games again, Baltimore Oriole outfielder Trey Mancini is fighting a much more serious battle. The 28-year-old revealed in a piece for the Player’s Tribune on Tuesday that he had been diagnosed with Stage 3 colon cancer.
“When I went in for an endoscopy and colonoscopy, the doctors told me that they were expecting to confirm that I had celiac disease, which is found in your small intestine,” Mancini wrote. “When the anesthesia put me under, I believed everything was going to be okay.”
Unfortunately for the outfielder, he has a family history of colon cancer with his father being diagnosed in 2011 of Stage 2 colon cancer.
“He started by eliminating all the possible things it could have been,” said Mancini. “I was still woozy from the anesthesia, but before he said the word cancer I was thinking to myself, ‘There’s no way he’s about to say what I think he’s about to say’. And then he said it: They had found a malignant tumor in my colon.”
The outfielder went in for a procedure in March to remove the malignant tumor and will likely miss the entire 2020 MLB season if it is able to resume as he will be undergoing chemotherapy treatments over the next six months. He began his current treatment on April 13th.
Mancini has spent his entire MLB career with Baltimore, getting promoted to the big leagues in September 2016 and hit a home run in his second at bat. After an impressive spring training in 2017, Mancini was named to the club’s opening day roster where he proved the club had made the right decision. He set an Orioles record by hitting 14 home runs prior to the All-Star Break – the most ever for a rookie before the midsummer classic.
Mancini featured in 154 games for the Orioles last season, putting up a very respectable 35 home runs and 97 RBIs. He has become a crucial member to the Orioles organization since his arrival and is being relied upon to play a big role in helping to rebuild the struggling franchise.
Even with Mancini’s solid numbers, Baltimore finished dead last in the AL East last season ending the campaign with just 54 wins. They were 49 games behind division winners, the New York Yankees. The franchise hasn’t made the playoffs since 2016 and haven’t won the World Series since 1983.
The outfielder had recently signed a new one-year deal with Baltimore worth $4.75, making it clear he has no intentions of leaving the club that gave him his first opportunity.
“After four years of minor league salaries, and three years of making close to the major league minimum, my new contract was a big moment for me, a milestone. But just as important as the money was the fact that I was still an Oriole, that I was going to be staying with the only team that I’ve ever played for.”
