The SEC’s all-time hit king made his main league debut this week, to nearly no fanfare. In some respects, the Tampa Bay Rays are a step down for Jake Mangum. The Rays at the moment play at Tampa’s Steinbrenner Subject, capability simply over 11,000, whereas they await disposition after Hurricane Milton took the roof off the Trop final offseason.
Mangum performed his faculty ball at Mississippi State, whose ballpark, Dudy Noble Subject, holds 15,000, with a document attendance of 16,423 cowbell-whacking, barbecue-devouring maniacs. It’s one of the crucial electrifying (in good instances) and demanding (in unhealthy) environments in all of faculty sports activities. To somebody who’s performed at The Dude, as Mangum has, even probably the most raucous main league crowd most likely seems like a Presbyterian church.
Mangum hit .408 as a freshman at Mississippi State and .357 total, and picked up a document 383 hits over 4 seasons on campus. However regardless of wrecking home in the very best novice baseball league on the planet, it took him six full seasons within the minors to get added to a 40-man roster.
As befits a four-year faculty participant, Mangum moved by way of the minors shortly. He reached Double-A after simply 62 skilled video games, and Triple-A after 111 extra video games. And he’s been good — actually good, the truth is — on the highest degree of the minor leagues, hitting .310/.353/.438 in 256 video games, with 93 extra-base hits and 43 stolen bases, whereas principally taking part in middle subject.
Regardless of this, curiosity in Mangum’s providers as a possible main leaguer has been tepid at greatest. And that’s saying one thing, as a result of — and I say this intending no undue disrespect — loads of the fellows floating round on main league benches are simply not that good.
In 2019, the Mets drafted Mangum within the fourth spherical, however that draft place belies his precise standing. Mangum, then a senior, signed for simply $20,000, the primary of seven consecutive minimum-bonus offers that financed the signings of highschool pitchers Josh Wolf and Matt Allan.
We’re within the weeds now, so I’m simply going to go hog wild with the trivia right here: Mangum was not the one record-setting contact-hitting outfielder the Mets drafted as a senior out of an SEC faculty that 12 months. They took LSU all-time hits chief Antoine Duplantis within the twelfth spherical and signed him for greater than 4 instances what they gave Mangum within the fourth. If the identify, you’re both a school baseball diehard, or that Duplantis’ youthful brother is Mondo Duplantis, the two-time defending Olympic pole vault champion. They positive can run, these Duplantis brothers.
Again to Mangum: He was traded twice in his minor league profession, however didn’t make it on to the 40-man roster till this previous November. As such, he was uncovered to the Rule 5 draft in 2023, however didn’t get a sniff. He was solely an honorable point out on the Mets’ team-specific prospect lists in 2021 and 2022; by the point he bought a numbered rating this previous February, he had the bizarre distinction of getting his age listed as 29.0; the one older participant to make a prospect record this 12 months was Yankees catcher J.C. Escarra. There are a pair youngsters on the Rays record who’re 11 1/2 years youthful than Mangum. In different phrases, Mangum is a month older than Magneuris Sierra, a veteran of six large league seasons who hasn’t performed within the majors or the affiliated minors since 2023.
By way of 9 video games within the majors, Mangum is doing properly. He chucked up a goose-egg on Thursday afternoon because the Angels routed the Rays 11-1, however Mangum remains to be 11-for-33 for his large league profession, with solely three strikeouts and 5 stolen bases in 5 makes an attempt. Small pattern dimension although it might be, that’s first impression.
I’m involved in Mangum for 2 causes. First is that his arrival within the majors is an efficient story. That is faculty baseball royalty, for starters, and I really like any excuse to recollect some faculty guys and speak about Antoine Duplantis and Rowdey Jordan and SEC West heroes of days passed by. Not solely that, Mangum scratched and clawed by way of six years within the wilderness, ready patiently for a call-up, and now he’s bought it. If you happen to don’t discover that story compelling, do us all a favor and look inside your self to heal your coronary heart of stone.
The second purpose to be involved in Mangum is that he’s a check case. If you happen to’ve watched playoff baseball previously 15 years, and checked in on what the person on the road says when his workforce loses — whether or not on social media, or speak radio, or a pair stools down on the bar to nobody specifically — you’ve most likely seen a couple of widespread threads. Hitters are too passive; they’re up there to take a stroll as an alternative of put the ball in play. Hitters swing and miss an excessive amount of. Offense is just too reliant on the house run, and when that boom-or-bust model goes bust, there’s no Plan B. No person’s good at situational hitting anymore; exhausting contact is all properly and good, however what occurred to the times when hitters positioned the ball the place they wished to and no person might shift in opposition to them?
Having spent fairly a little bit of time on social media, and on the radio, and at bars — , something that passes for the agora in post-industrial America — I’ve trotted out any variety of rejoinders to those arguments. It doesn’t work. You need to use numbers, or counterfactuals, or level out that the criticisms that get lobbed at Aaron Choose and Gunnar Henderson right now had been as soon as leveled in opposition to Ted Williams and Babe Ruth. The proverbial slings and arrows haven’t modified since humankind used literal slings and arrows.
The place does Mangum enter into all this? He Performs the Sport the Proper Manner. Not solely within the sense that he’s what typically will get euphemistically known as “a grinder,” however he’s additionally a freakishly proficient contact hitter who hits the ball on the bottom and to all fields. He’s like a time traveler from 1941.
Mangum’s profession minor league stroll charge, throughout all ranges, is simply 5.8%. He doesn’t sit there ready for the sport to return to him. Throughout faculty, the Cape Cod League, the minors, and the professionals, Mangum has hit simply 29 residence runs in 3,342 plate appearances. Throughout elements of three seasons in Triple-A, he’s hit roughly two groundballs for each fly ball.
The nearer you have a look at Mangum’s recreation, the extra the SEC profession hits document appears like a backhanded praise. A school counting stat document will depend on a participant getting 4 seasons at school; if Dylan Crews had stayed at school for his senior season, he would nearly definitely have damaged Duplantis’ faculty hits document and possibly crushed Mangum’s convention hits document. He didn’t, after all, as a result of he had higher issues to do because the no. 2 total decide in 2023.
Right here’s one purpose Mangum, despite his elite contact abilities, scared off skilled evaluators. In 2023, he was within the 99th percentile of Triple-A hitters for chase charge. In 2024, he was within the 98th percentile.
By swinging at so many pitches exterior the strike zone, Mangum not solely reduces his stroll charge, he’s placing balls in play off suboptimal pitches. On pitches exterior the strike zone, he hit .243/.368/.323 in Triple-A over the previous two seasons, which put him within the thirty first percentile of hitters at that degree for wOBA.
When the bases are empty, the result’s actually the one factor that issues. Strikeout or groundout, stroll or single or catcher’s interference is sort of immaterial. However with runners on, the state of affairs will get sophisticated.
Up to now this season, Mangum has seen 59 pitches with runners on base and put 16 of them in play, which is likely one of the 10 highest percentages within the league amongst hitters who’ve seen at the very least 50 pitches with males on. He’s hitting .313 with males on base, however the 11 instances he’s failed to achieve base have illustrated that there are worse issues than swinging by way of a pitch with a runner in scoring place.
Fly balls are fascinating as a result of they produce residence runs and extra-base hits with runners in scoring place, however in addition they nearly by no means flip into double performs or pressure outs.
In 17 profession plate appearances with runners on base, Mangum has 5 hits, 4 RBI, and one stroll, and has but to strike out. That’s nice! However Mangum has come to the plate with at the very least one runner on base and fewer than two outs 11 instances, and hit into three double performs. Even accepting the acute, excessive smallness of that pattern, that’s unhealthy. Actually unhealthy. Virtually 3 times as many double performs per alternative as every other hitter within the pitch-tracking period.
Then there’s this play, which is what bought me excited about Mangum within the context of situational hitting within the first place. The state of affairs: Runner on third, one out, one-run recreation within the backside of the seventh, infield in.
That is situational hitting heaven. A medium-depth fly ball scores a run. So does a reliable bunt. With the infield in, any well-hit grounder might be going to discover a gap and never solely rating a run however put Mangum on base as properly. That is the place the Nellie Fox-type hitter shortens up and punches the ball by way of the outlet. What did Mangum do?
Floor the ball proper to the primary baseman, who threw Kameron Misner out at residence. Not solely did Mangum make an out and fail to attain the run, his groundball left the Rays two bases worse off than they’d’ve been if he’d struck out.
We’ll see if this evens out over the course of the season, if Mangum comes out forward ultimately. However that is the hazard of situational hitting — until it’s executed with inhuman precision, it carries much less upside than swinging from the heels and praying, and carries extra dangers.