One of the most annoying things about Eric Hosmer playing first base during his brief time with the Cubs is that not only was he bad defensively to go along with his subpar offense, but he also had a handful of plays where he’d put a pitcher in harm’s way. Well, Trey Mancini has been even worse on defense and on Wednesday, he was nearly responsible for breaking Mark Leiter Jr.’s arm against the Pirates.
Leiter came in during the seventh inning, when the Cubs had a comfortable 6-1 lead, but had to get out of a bases-loaded jam. The righty struck out Rodolfo Castro for the second out of the inning and then got a ground ball to first base off the bat of Tucupita Marcano, who pinch hit for Austin Hedges. Great job from Leiter, but Mancini turned a routine grounder into a disaster.
Mancini fielded the ball cleanly at first, but after a couple steps he lost the ball, picked it up and then over-threw Leiter, who was running over to cover the base. Leiter was extremely lucky that his left arm wasn’t broken on the play, as it got stuck behind him as he landed hard trying to avoid running into the base runner.
Absolutely terrible and also 100% avoidable if it wasn’t for Mancini doing whatever it was that he did. Leiter stayed in and got the final out in the seventh and hopefully his left arm will be fine after the next couple of off days, but man did that look scary.
And the thing is, just how Cubs fans quickly lost patience with Hosmer, the same is happening with Mancini. The right-handed hitter has also been annoyingly underwhelming because although his numbers aren’t bottom of the barrel bad, Mancini is only slashing .243/.317/.359, following Wednesday’s 8-3 Cubs win over the Pirates.
While Mancini’s OBP is close to league average, that simply does not cut it in this offense. The Cubs signed Mancini so that he could provide at least average production at first base/DH and with that comes the idea that he should be one of the better sluggers in the lineup. Approaching the halfway mark of the season, Mancini only has 4 home runs and 9 doubles in 204 plate appearances and his .359 slugging % ranks 171st out of 199 players with at least 200 plate appearances so far this season.
Below average offense, bad defense and nearly getting one of the best relief pitchers on the team seriously injured is one helluva combo for Mancini. And it’s not just that Leiter has been awesome, he’s literally the only reliever that David Ross can count on to get left-handed hitters out. Again, let’s hope that after the adrenaline wore off on Wednesday that Leiter’s left arm feels OK.
This previous free agent class is looking pretty rough for the Cubs for the most part. Hopefully Mancini can at least turn it around at the plate and hey how about just not getting pitchers in horrible spots when playing first base. That’d be nice, too.
