BALTIMORE – Trey Mancini’s comeback bid is on.
After being cut by the Miami Marlins last spring and failing to latch on with another club, the former Orioles first baseman and outfielder signed a minor league contract with the Arizona Diamondbacks on Friday with an invitation to spring training, according to multiple reports.
Mancini, 32, last appeared in a professional game at any level in 2023, hitting .234 with four home runs and a .635 OPS in 79 games for the Chicago Cubs.
Since the Orioles traded him to the Houston Astros at the 2022 trade deadline in a three-team deal that netted them pitching prospects Chayce McDermott and Seth Johnson, Mancini hasn’t been able to replicate the .270/.334/.463 slash line he posted in six seasons with Baltimore.
He’ll get a chance to stick with Arizona, however, a team that lost star first baseman Christian Walker to Houston in free agency and replaced him with the left-handed hitting Josh Naylor.
Mancini presents a right-handed option for the Diamondbacks – who signed ace Corbin Burnes after his lone season in Baltimore – with some power potential if he can return to the form he showed with the Orioles earlier in his career.
The 2013 eighth-round draft pick out of Notre Dame broke out with the then-rebuilding Orioles in 2017, finishing third in American League Rookie of the Year Award voting.
He hit 83 home runs over his first three full seasons before being diagnosed with Stage 3 colon cancer in 2020, forcing him to miss the entire season while doing chemotherapy treatments.
Mancini made a triumphant return to the field in 2021; he launched 21 home runs and finished runner-up to the New York Mets’ Pete Alonso in that summer’s Home Run Derby.
He was off to another solid start the following year before being traded to the Astros in what proved to be the final year before the Orioles would return to contention.
Though he struggled offensively in Houston, Mancini made his mark on the club’s World Series run with a key defensive stop in Game 5 of the Fall Classic that robbed a game-tying hit from the Philadelphia Phillies’ Kyle Schwarber.
