Trey Mancini is done playing baseball, and he wanted to say goodbye the way he's said most things over the years — directly, gratefully, and with the Orioles at the center of it.
Mancini announced his retirement Tuesday in a lengthy Instagram post thanking the organizations, teammates, and people who shaped his career. "I am blessed to have made a home in the Orioles organization for ten years," he wrote, before touching on every stop of his 11-year professional journey — a World Series with Houston, time with the Cubs in Chicago ("I wish I played better for you guys"), and a brief return to the majors this year with the Angels.
He also thanked his wife, Sara, their daughter, Sadie, and the Orioles trainers and the medical staff at Johns Hopkins who treated him during his cancer diagnosis, writing that their care "saved my life."
The announcement closes a career that began when Baltimore drafted Mancini out of Notre Dame and, by his own account, never really stopped feeling like home even after he left.
This year, Mancini appeared in five games with the Angels after signing a minor league deal in January. He went 4-for-13 with a triple and four RBI before being designated for assignment in June. "I knew after I got DFA'd that unless I somehow got claimed that I was gonna be done, but I wanted to take some time and not retire immediately," Mancini told MASN's Roch Kubatko on Monday night. "It all worked out, as long as it took to get back up."
The Angels stint gave Mancini something he'd been chasing since the Cubs released him in the summer of 2023 — proof, mostly to himself, that he could still play at the highest level. He'd gone unsigned in 2024 and spent 2025 in Triple-A with Reno, hitting well enough (.308 with 16 home runs in 74 games) to believe he belonged, even as the calls didn't come. Becoming a father last October changed the calculus further. "It was really hard being away from Sara and Sadie for that long," he told Kubatko. "I missed a solid two, 2½ months of her growing up and developing... it had a big impact on the decision and definitely makes the decision easier, too."
Baltimore is where the bulk of the story happened. Mancini played 701 games for the Orioles, batting .270/.334/.463 with 117 home runs, and finished third in American League Rookie of the Year voting in 2017. He was the organization's most visible and most loyal presence through some of its leanest years, staying publicly committed to the rebuild even as the roster turned over around him. Then, in February 2020, everything paused: a stage 3 colon cancer diagnosis that cost him the entire season and sent him through chemotherapy in the middle of a pandemic, largely without visitors allowed in the room. He returned the following year, reached the finals of the 2021 Home Run Derby, and hit an inside-the-park home run in his final at-bat as an Oriole before Baltimore traded him to Houston at the 2022 deadline — a fitting, almost absurd final image for a player who specialized in emotional ones.
He won a World Series ring that October. He credits much of his career, on and off the field, to people within the Orioles organization, particularly Brady Anderson, who helped remake his swing early on. "I genuinely don't think I have close to the career that I did, especially in Baltimore, without Brady," Mancini said.
He finishes with a career line of .263/.327/.448, 129 home runs, and 404 RBI over parts of nine major league seasons. Asked what's next, the 34-year-old didn't rule out a return to the public eye in some form. "I definitely will want to do something," he told Kubatko. "Thirty-four is pretty young to be fully retired. I can't play that much tennis."