Every baseball player dreams of getting their long-awaited major-league call up soon after being drafted by a professional franchise.
For some, the dream is realized in an instant. For others like Jake Mangum, a fourth-round pick of the Mets in 2019, the wait is much longer.
Mangum would have liked to expedite his journey to the big leagues, but he does believe there were benefits to him debuting with the Rays at the age of 29.
“I feel like mentally I could handle the storms that come a lot better,” Mangum said. “At 22, I feel like when the struggle comes … I can say I handled it better now than I did at 22. I don’t want to say I handled it poorly at 22, but I’d say now I handle it better.”
Mangum was rather consistent throughout the 2025 season, but he did endure some struggles in the month of July, hitting .221 with a .567 OPS in 22 games. Had he experienced that at a younger age, it’s possible that those struggles might have lingered.
But that wasn’t the case. Once the calendar flipped to August, Mangum responded by slashing .314/.338/.379 with a .717 OPS in his final 46 games, displaying a level of maturity and experience he didn’t possess in his younger years.
“I just remember thinking in that July, there have just been so many experiences in my life through the game of baseball over the years that prepared me for that struggle in July, to help me get out of it and get back on track in August and September and finish up a really good rookie year,” Mangum said. “I thought there were a ton of benefits to being a little more experienced as a rookie. The other alternative isn’t really a good thought to have. The other alternative is the ‘woe is me’ stuff. I really tried not to do that through the minors. I believe in God. I believe everything happens for a reason. My belief through all that of kinda waiting so long is that this is exactly where I’m supposed to be. Do it to the best of your ability and see what happens. But, yeah, I genuinely do think there were a lot of benefits to waiting that long. I didn’t necessarily like it through it. But right now, in my rookie year this year, I was just thinking, ‘Alright, there’s a reason for this. There are benefits to this.’ I tried to find all the benefits I could from it. I like the year I had. But I definitely know there’s more in the tank.”