Orioles’ Trey Mancini: ‘If baseball returns in 2020, it will probably be without me’

In his first detailed comments about his March 12 colon cancer surgery, Orioles outfielder Trey Mancini said that he began a six-month chemotherapy regime on April 13, and that if there is baseball this season, it will probably be without him.

Mancini’s comments are in an article he wrote for “The Players’ Tribune.”

In the article, he wrote that during the annual Orioles’ physical he took in Sarasota in February, he was found to have unusually low iron levels, and that another blood test was required.

Mancini, who had the flu, thought that it was the reason for the low iron levels, but a second test produced even lower iron levels.

The initial thoughts by doctors were that Mancini had either celiac disease or a stomach ulcer. Colon cancer was thought to be a remote possibility.

After a colonoscopy and endoscopy, Mancini was diagnosed with Stage III colon cancer.

The diagnosis came on March 6, and surgery was performed at a Baltimore hospital on March 12, the day that spring training was halted.

Mancini writes that his father, an OB-GYN, had Stage II colon cancer in 2011 at 58. Mancini turned 28 on March 18, six days after the surgery.

He’ll be receiving chemo every two weeks for six months. “If baseball returns in 2020, it will probably be without me,” Mancini writes.

“I want everybody to know that I’m O.K. I know reading everything and seeing that I had a malignant tumor removed from my colon, it’s a lot to absorb — believe me, I know. I’m not really big on social media, but I posted a video on Instagram after my surgery because I wanted people to see that I looked like myself and I was in good spirits.

“And I have no doubt that, even when I’m doing chemo, I can work out and do some things. So, whenever the time comes for me to come back to baseball, I’ll be ready. But I just want to make sure that I am physically fine before I go out there and start trying to perform again at a major league level.”