UPPER MARLBORO, Md. -- Trey Mancini remembers his first big league Spring Training vividly, and with great affection.

He got to brush shoulders with Chris Davis, who was fresh off a 47-homer season, and Mark Trumbo, who was about to embark on one of his own. He learned from five-time All-Star Adam Jones, the Orioles’ de facto captain who, by that time, could have made a run at mayor of Baltimore.

He had in his possession, above all, the first big chance of his career to show the coaching staff he was progressing toward a spot on a Major League roster maybe the following year. (It ended up being that September.)

That was not long ago. It was 2016, in fact, when Mancini arrived in Sarasota, Fla., for his first Spring Training.

Now, a mere four years later and at the culmination of a 2019 that saw trade rumors, stretches of equal parts excellence and struggle, and a rather stunning absence from the All-Star Game, Mancini finds himself as the Orioles’ seasoned veteran, ready to pay forward the wisdom imparted on him by leaders of Orioles past.

“I know it’s my turn now to do the same for them, even though it seems like yesterday that was me,” Mancini said at a Saturday stop during the Orioles’ inaugural Birdland Caravan tour. “I definitely feel like it’s my time to be in that role and be there for guys that need advice and need help.”

Whenever -- and however -- Mancini manifests leadership will be a continuation of the maturation trajectory the organization has envisioned for the current third-longest-tenured Oriole. After several of Baltimore’s 108 losses in 2019, Mancini became the go-to voice to speak generally, and candidly, about a team whose leader is just 27 years of age.

Both his demeanor and play last season helped him earn the vociferous respect of teammates, coaches and opponents.

“As he gets more comfortable being in the big leagues and putting up years like he’s just put up, that will be more natural for him, to pull guys aside and teach along the way as well,” manager Brandon Hyde said last season.

• Mancini's goal: to be 'best leader I can be'

Some of the experience Mancini can impart extends past the playing field. He knows struggle at the highest level. Though he'd dealt with trade rumor rumblings during his time in the Minors, such talk was never louder than it was this past season.

“It’s never anything that I worry about too much,” said Mancini. “I think I’ve gotten better throughout my career of not listening to a lot of that. … It’s not anything I think about or consume because if you do, it can weigh on you.”

The Orioles will bring 34 players aged 25 years old or younger to Spring Training this year, including 14 members of their Top 30 Prospects list, per MLB Pipeline. None will have more eyes on him than Adley Rutschman, the first overall pick in the 2019 Draft and No. 4 prospect in baseball.

• Here are 5 O's prospects to watch as camp NRIs

While Mancini never came up with the magnifying glass that will follow Rutschman before his projected arrival in 2022, the 2013 eighth-rounder does know at least part of what it’s like to feel the need to show out at your first Major League camp.

“I was like a bull in a china shop,” said Mancini, who started 0-for-9 during Spring Training of 2016. Always his harshest critic, it took the sage but simple advice from some of those veterans to alleviate the self-pressure.

An 0-0 count, closed eyes and deep breath later, he was on the board with a single to center field.

“I remember Buck [Showalter] sitting me down when I had gotten reassigned to Minor League camp and [he] just said, ‘Enjoy it a little bit, and [don’t] be so intense all the time,'" Mancini recalled. “That’s probably what I'll tell them, too.”

Mancini wants to improve himself -- outfield defense is an area of focus -- and thereby the Orioles in 2020. He’s happy with how his ’19 played out -- career marks in nearly every offensive category, including a .935 OPS after the All-Star break -- even with the team’s ongoing struggles.

“You have a good year, you want to have another good one after that and you want to be a role model on the team that all the guys can look up to,” Mancini said. “There’s always something to inspire yourself.

"You don’t have to always be rah rah. ... You have to stay even keeled, especially when things are not going so well."

Mancini will take his career year in stride, spreading the lessons it taught to him to the next generation of Orioles talent -- a situation he was on the other side of not that long ago.

"Happens quick," he said.