After dealing with his own struggles, Mancini wants to lead O's back to respectability

Among all the interviews I had with Orioles players this year, probably the most compelling to me was one that occurred in the Baltimore clubhouse on July 12. Just days ahead of the All-Star break, Trey Mancini poured his heart out about the rough season he was having - and he didn't hold back.

At the time, Mancini was 1-for-21 over his previous nine games and that dropped his slash line over 88 games to .220/.296/.362. It was well off his 2017 season, when he finished third in the American League Rookie of the Year voting and batted .293/.338/.488.

In that July interview, Mancini told me the strain of his struggles was weighing heavily on him and he admitted all that what Buck Showalter would call "want to" was getting in the way.

"That is a fair assessment," Mancini said. "I care about this more than anything in the world, almost to a fault. To whenever I leave the field a lot of times, I'm thinking about it a lot and carrying it with me everywhere I go. I am trying to get better in that aspect. I've never gone through anything like this and I'm having a tough time mentally on how to figure out to best handle it. Because what I thought was a slump before has been totally redefined.

"This has been extremely, extremely difficult. I love this city. I love everything about Baltimore. It's the only organization I've known and I hope I play here for a long time. But I know I've got to step it up and play like the player that I am."

When I left that interview that day, it was hard not to feel for Mancini, a player I've known well since his earliest days in the organization. Talk about a player that gives a damn.

After the All-Star star break, Mancini was able to make an adjustment where he stayed back on the ball better, allowing him to start to drive the ball to right-center more. His numbers got better. He salvaged something from this season.

During the Houston series, Mancini could look back on his season and realize he survived those dark days of June and July. In the second half, he looked much more like the player from 2017. He was no longer struggling mentally with baseball.

"I feel like I aged a few years and am a 35-year-old guy now," he said with a laugh. "This year produced the lowest of the lows by far in my life. I couldn't get up in the mornings sometimes, it was that hard on me. I never thought I was going to break out of it and then finally was able to.

"I have so many people to thank for that. Family, teammates, coaches. Without them, I would not have ever broken out of it at all. But that's the thing at this level - you can't do it on your own, you really can't. You need people around to help you out. I learned that this year."

If it's true that what doesn't kill us, makes us stronger, Mancini is stronger today in many ways.

But still he came up short on most of his 2017 statistics, batting .242/.299/.416 for the 2018 season with an OPS of .715. He matched last year's homer total with 24, but fell 20 RBIs short of last season with 58. His OPS+ of 120 for 2017 dropped to 97.

Mancini was hurt a bit by hitting more ground balls - 51 percent last year and 54.6 percent this season. He was out on his front side too much in the first half, which accounted for much of that. He also hit just .150 with runners in scoring position after batting .340 with RISP in the 2017 season.

Defensive metrics rated his fielding poorly and that and the falloff on offense left his Wins Above Replacement per Baseball-Reference.com at minus-0.1 after it was 2.2 last season. But he also hit into some tough luck at times, perhaps accounting for some of the drop in his batting average on balls in play from .352 to .285.

But as a player that is not arbitration eligible until after the 2019 season, Mancini figures to be a key piece in the Orioles' rebuilding efforts. He can't be a free agent until after the 2022 season.

Mancini is already emerging as one of the new leaders in a much younger Orioles clubhouse and he fully embraces that role.

"I don't know if it's really hit me yet," he said. "Probably will in spring next year. I'm like now one of the head player association alternate reps on our team - that is crazy to think about. Stuff like that is hard for me to believe still.

"But it means a lot, having come up in this organization and having so many great experiences in the minors and here in Baltimore. To be at this point now, to take over a leadership role, if you will, is pretty humbling."

He's already talking like a leader. When we spoke on Thursday before the series opener with Houston, Mancini said that a losing/rebuilding Orioles team needed to take some small improvements within games to build on and produce a more confident and better team overall.

"It's like the New York series and that second game (of the Wednesday doubleheader) in Boston. Getting smoked the first game and coming back to win the second," he said. "Things like that and the way we played those games you can measure the character of players and just being a professional.

"You play out a whole 162-game season, and no matter what your record is, you need to give your best effort and look in the mirror and be happy with yourself at the end of the day. The way you go about your business and prepare and play is important. Playing clean baseball like that is big. It might be tougher in the win-loss record for a while. It will not automatically show up overnight when you play against the best in the world. But I think you can turn it around sooner rather than later if everyone buys into the same thing and you look at it from a perspective of playing clean ball and playing your heart out every night. Do that and play as a team and things can turn around a lot quicker."

They did turn around for Mancini eventually this year. Moving forward, he may be a player that produces numbers more in line with his 2017 season. He loves being an Oriole and not only wants to be part of rebuilding this team, but wants to be a leader in doing that.