Dillon Atkinson: Since break, Mancini and Machado have flipped offensive production

Prior to the All-Star break, Orioles left fielder Trey Mancini looked like he was Rookie of the Year-worthy, if not for Yankees' Aaron Judge posting Most Valuable Player caliber numbers. The 25-year-old rookie posted a .312/.354/.538 slash line with 14 homers and a 133 wRC+. Orioles superstar Manny Machado was on a different path, however, slashing .230/.296/.445 with 18 home runs and a 90 wRC+ through the first half of the season.

Since the All-Star break, these two players are producing quite the opposite of what their first-half numbers were showing, almost completely swapping with each other. So far in the second half, Mancini is slashing .235/.311/.434 with a 94 wRC+. Machado, on the other hand, has returned to superstar form, with a slash line of .333/.365/.590 with a 146 wRC+ since the break. His three grand slams in an 11-game period, including a walk-off against the Angels on Friday, have solidified in everybody's eyes that, yeah, he's back. Were this drop-off and increase in production in the second half for these two expected, though?

For Machado, most people were expecting a big breakout in the second half. As I wrote about a month ago, Machado was mashing the baseball. The majority of those hard-hit baseballs just happened to find. At the time, the Orioles third baseman was leading all of baseball in balls hit with an exit velocity of 100 mph or higher with 99. His hard-hit percentage was a stat that Machado has continued to best every season since 2013, from 29 to 29.3 to 33.1 to 35.4 to 40.4 percent through that time of this season. You wouldn't expect these numbers to translate to a .230/.296/.445 line, and Machado has made sure that line wouldn't stay down for much longer. On top of all that, his batting average on balls in play (BABIP) heading into the All-Star break was a low .239, which is another indicator of good things to come. My, oh my, have the good things come.

For Mancini, although his first half looked amazing, it's reasonable to see why he'd start to come back down to Earth in the second half. A first indicator could simply be that he's a rookie that was never really a top prospect, and nobody expected him to produce this much for the Orioles this season. His .385 BABIP was also something to keep an eye on, as this number usually is a sign that he's been having a little bit of good fortune that eventually could run out. There wasn't a whole lot to predict a drop-off after the All-Star break, but it was enough to see why thinking that would be reasonable.

Since the second half of the season started, Mancini has just a .250 BABIP, so it's possible that he's running into a little bit of bad luck now. However, his soft and hard-hit percentages have drastically changed from before to after the break. His soft-hit percentage from first half to second half has spiked from 15.4 percent to 26.2 percent, and his hard rate has lowered from 36.7 to 28 percent.

Since it's been just a little bit over a month, it's too soon to tell whether or not Mancini is just in a bad funk that he'll get over, if he's going through a learning curve or if he's simply just regressing to where he should be. There's no way to tell that just yet with him being in his rookie year. But whatever the case may be, it is interesting seeing how he and Machado have flip-flopped in offensive production since the All-Star break. Since some, including myself, didn't even expect Mancini to crack the opening day roster this year, you could make the argument that his production has basically made it seem like Machado's never left to begin with.

Dillon Atkinson blogs about the Orioles for Orioles Uncensored. Follow him on Twitter: @DAtkinsonOU. His thoughts on the O's appear here as part of MASNsports.com's continuing commitment to welcome guest bloggers to our little corner of cyberspace. All opinions expressed are those of the guest bloggers, who are not employed by MASNsports.com but are just as passionate about their baseball as our roster of writers.