Trey Mancini and the Cubs' Hitting Team

[Guest]

Trey Mancini's spring is becoming a huge storyline for this team. A few weeks shy of Opening Day, with Seiya Suzuki sidelined for the early going, Mancini looks like not only an everyday player, but a lineup fixture. What I want to talk about, though, is how that's happened, and what the implications are.

 

Look, there's a reason why the Cubs got Mancini for two years and $14 million in the late stages of an offseason that was otherwise active, fast-moving, and very spendy. His struggles after being traded to Houston last season were glaring and well-documented, and given both his age and his defensive limitations, teams were easily made wary by any sign of trouble.

 

I think part of that difficulty in the second half was a Dusty Baker thing. Upon acquiring both Mancini and Christian Vázquez at the deadline, Baker parked them both on the bench most of the time, preferring to stick with Yuli Gurriel and Martín Maldonado, respectively. Dusty gets a bum rap from us Cubs fans sometimes, because his tenure in Chicago was perhaps the nadir of his career, and because once narratives about a manager crystallize, it can be hard to break free of them, even once that manager disproves them. Dusty has evolved, but sometimes, that goes unnoticed. Whatever mixture of injury and clubhouse management he was doing ultimately worked, because Houston won the World Series. I think he mishandled both Vázquez and Mancini, though, and could have gotten plenty out of them if he'd used them as often and as well as James Click envisioned when he acquired the two.

 

So maybe there was a mental or psychological (or logistical or mathematical; you can choose your favorite flavor) aspect to Mancini's poor run with Houston. I do think there was also a physical (or mechanical) factor involved, too, though. Here he is mishitting a foul ball on a hittable pitch last summer.

 

https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sporty-videos?playId=9b975c9a-26e5-46cc-8367-0e15a718606b

 

If you watch that video, and if you've seen Mancini either at his best in 2018-19 or this spring, a lot of it will look familiar. He takes a very upright stance in the box. He has a lot of apparent power. There, though, he was late on a 91-MPH sinker. Part of the trouble was that he was down 0-2, so he was probably looking offspeed a bit. Another problem, however, was in his hands and his posture throughout the swing. Compare that clip to this one, of the homer he launched in yesterday's Cactus League win.

 

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He keeps his chest above his hips better, so he can turn faster and harder. There's still a rowing motion to the swing, as there ought to be, with the hands traveling backward and then forward, his back elbow up and then down, all generating power and leverage, but it's less exaggerated and the movements are smaller (thus, faster) than they got to be during his time with the Astros. It looks easier and quicker, and more like his halcyon seasons before cancer sidelined him.

 

As his long hits already this spring remind us, Mancini is a great fit for Wrigley, because his best contact takes the ball to left-center field. He could crack 30 homers in full-time duty, and although I think the best outcomes for the Cubs this year involve him playing a bit less than that, it's still pretty clear what kind of upside we're talking about.

 

The key takeaway for me, not just with regard to Mancini but based on the success of Cody Bellinger and the slight reengineering of some other hitters in camp this year, is that the Cubs might be coming out of the wilderness a bit when it comes to getting what they ought to out of their position players. I don't think they need to be the Dodgers (although that would be great!) in terms of always surprising the baseball world with their ability to turn scrubs into stars. They just need to stop squandering offensive talent by giving mixed signals about approach and mechanics, as they did for much of the half-decade after the World Series win.

 

We can (and should) decry ownership for not ponying up to keep some of the stars of that team, and we can fairly say that some of those players needed to work harder and in a more focused way to stay atop their games in the period after the championship run. My frequent thought over the last few years, though, has been that the front office was the group that dropped the ball, by not adequately instructing and developing hitters at either the minor- or the major-league level during that phase.

 

The team is spending money again. That's gotten them some talented hitters, including Bellinger, Mancini, Dansby Swanson, as well as a few reclamation projects, like Tucker Barnhart and Mike Tauchman. Those latter guys don't need to be stars for the team to be good, and the former trio have a high floor, anyway. Where I think we could see the kind of projection-busting required to get the Cubs back to the top of the NL Central is in giving all of those guys an extra 5 or 10 percent of their current value at the plate, be it with small mechanical fixes, a clear-minded and well-communicated approach, or both. I think we can harbor more hope in that area right now than was reasonable even a year or two ago.

[Bull]

The link you showed is not him mis-hitting a pitch. That is him intentionally fouling off a pitch down 0-2. He’s protecting the plate. That’s all of it.

 

The embedded video is ahead in the count and swinging away. But thanks to your analysis, I’ll be looking to see if his posture changes down 0-2 once the games start counting, or if he does it in high leverage situations, or not at all.

[Guest]

The link you showed is not him mis-hitting a pitch. That is him intentionally fouling off a pitch down 0-2. He’s protecting the plate. That’s all of it.

 

The embedded video is ahead in the count and swinging away. But thanks to your analysis, I’ll be looking to see if his posture changes down 0-2 once the games start counting, or if he does it in high leverage situations, or not at all.

 

Well, I won’t ask you to take my word for it—go check the videos!—but that pitch and swing was typical, rather than an aberration or an emergency adaptation, throughout his second half last year.

[Bertz]

I'm terrible at analyzing swings, but Mancini might get significantly more juice just from moving ballparks.

 

 

I'm counting 14 outs last year that were on the Wrigley warning track or farther, and MIL/CIN are even kinder to him.

 

The offense in general I don't worry about it being bad. There's just too much depth on the bench and at Iowa for that to happen. We do need some fortune with veteran bouncebacks or the youths for the offense to be really good though. Suzuki and Bellinger are the easiest and most straightforward to see, but Mancini putting up another 2019 would have a similar impact.

[Brock Beauchamp]

With the addition of Mancini, Bellinger, and Swanson there is a lot of potential production on offense but not a lot of guaranteed production on offense. It will be interesting to see how the Cubs betting on upside plays out in the early going (though both Swanson and Bellinger obviously bring significant defensive value with them).

[Guest]

I'm terrible at analyzing swings, but Mancini might get significantly more juice just from moving ballparks.

 

 

I'm counting 14 outs last year that were on the Wrigley warning track or farther, and MIL/CIN are even kinder to him.

 

The offense in general I don't worry about it being bad. There's just too much depth on the bench and at Iowa for that to happen. We do need some fortune with veteran bouncebacks or the youths for the offense to be really good though. Suzuki and Bellinger are the easiest and most straightforward to see, but Mancini putting up another 2019 would have a similar impact.

 

Brad's always on top of it. Haha. Yes! That's what I'm getting at. As cozy as Houston is down the lines and in RCF, and as good as Camden Yards was *before* their big change of dimensions last year, left-center was not an ideal target in either of those venues last year. Wrigley is and will always be perfect for guys who take aim at that '368', and Mancini is that kind of hitter.

[Brock Beauchamp]

Brad's always on top of it. Haha. Yes! That's what I'm getting at. As cozy as Houston is down the lines and in RCF, and as good as Camden Yards was *before* their big change of dimensions last year, left-center was not an ideal target in either of those venues last year. Wrigley is and will always be perfect for guys who take aim at that '368', and Mancini is that kind of hitter.

I'm obviously not as informed as the rest of you but isn't Wrigley particularly brutal on hitters in April? Would it be expected for Mancini to struggle successfully elevating the ball early only to see those balls leave the park later in the season?

[JudasIscariotTheBird]

Brad's always on top of it. Haha. Yes! That's what I'm getting at. As cozy as Houston is down the lines and in RCF, and as good as Camden Yards was *before* their big change of dimensions last year, left-center was not an ideal target in either of those venues last year. Wrigley is and will always be perfect for guys who take aim at that '368', and Mancini is that kind of hitter.

I'm obviously not as informed as the rest of you but isn't Wrigley particularly brutal on hitters in April? Would it be expected for Mancini to struggle successfully elevating the ball early only to see those balls leave the park later in the season?

Yeah, what those charts don't show is the effect of wind and weather, which is more significant at Wrigley than most places, but obviously, in general, the new dimentions are going to help Mancini relative to other players.

[Derwood]

Hasn't the wind factor been somewhat mitigated by the giant video board in left field?

[CubinNY]

Hasn't the wind factor been somewhat mitigated by the giant video board in left field?

 

Maybe a little, but if the ball gets above the board in its flight path it's going to get knocked down. It has more of an effect for hard-line drive-type home runs.

[Proven Veteran]

Dusty didn't get a bum rap, he was a disaster for the Cubs. He also botched the World Series for the Giants.

[CubinNY]

Dusty didn't get a bum rap, he was a disaster for the Cubs. He also botched the World Series for the Giants.

He's the luckiest guy to ever manage in baseball.

 

Last year he didn't want Willson because...checks notes...he might play too hard for his next contract.

[squally1313]

Dusty didn't get a bum rap, he was a disaster for the Cubs. He also botched the World Series for the Giants.

He's the luckiest guy to ever manage in baseball.

 

Last year he didn't want Willson because...checks notes...he might play too hard for his next contract.

 

If I wanted to criticize Dusty, there's a lot of other places I'd start besides the year he won the World Series.

[Guest]

Hasn't the wind factor been somewhat mitigated by the giant video board in left field?

 

Maybe a little, but if the ball gets above the board in its flight path it's going to get knocked down. It has more of an effect for hard-line drive-type home runs.

 

It’s very much a question of how far above the board it gets, and when it gets back below it in flight. I’ve heard the effect described as a kind of wind shadow. The board only stops the wind within, say, 80 feet of itself, anyway, but that can be a crucial point in the flight of the ball… I dunno. I think it still needs further study.

[JudasIscariotTheBird]

Dusty didn't get a bum rap, he was a disaster for the Cubs. He also botched the World Series for the Giants.

He's the luckiest guy to ever manage in baseball.

 

Last year he didn't want Willson because...checks notes...he might play too hard for his next contract.

 

If I wanted to criticize Dusty, there's a lot of other places I'd start besides the year he won the World Series.

Yeah, but that statement from Dusty was the most Dusty thing I've heard him say...apart from all the whole leaderoff hitter and fishing stuff.

[CyHawk_Cub]

Saying/doing stupid horsefeathers during a WS season doesn't preclude it from being stupid horsefeathers. Why should it be discounted? Unless the argument is process doesn't matter (Theo would be offended by this, hahaha).

[Janelle-Alexis]

I would have fired Joe Maddon on the field for decisions made during Game 7 of a World Series that he won.