Phillies prospect Mickey Moniak enduring difficult lessons at Lakewood

LAKEWOOD, N.J. – The hope and dream when you have been bad enough to get the first overall pick in the annual baseball draft is that the selection comes when there is a superstar talent at the top of the board. The reality is that such scenarios are the exception rather than the rule.

What's true about the great overall No. 1s is that they were usually great upon arrival. Bryce Harper, for instance, hit .297 with a .392 on-base percentage and .894 OPS in his first full professional season, playing in the low-A South Atlantic League and the double-A Eastern League. Carlos Correa hit .320 with a .405 on-base percentage and .872 OPS in his first full season in the low-A Midwest League. Ken Griffey Jr.'s first-year line: .325, .415 and .972 at high-A and double-A levels.

Mickey Moniak, the first overall pick of your Philadelphia Phillies in 2016, is not in the midst of one of those seasons with the franchise's low-A affiliate at Lakewood. After going hitless in three at-bats Thursday at FirstEnergy Park, Moniak was hitting .256 with a .308 on-base percentage and .676 OPS through 100 games. He entered July hitting .271 with a .322 on-base percentage and .718 OPS. Since July 1, he has hit .216 with a .272 on-base percentage and has just five extra-base hits.

Not to worry, the Phillies will tell you. He's only 19 in a league filled with older players. He will get better.

"I know you said the words rough time," Lakewood manager Marty Malloy said. "I don't say that. I know you're going to, but we just try to stay as positive as we can because there is always something throughout the course of the day that is going to be a positive, so we talk about the positives and not the negatives. We keep reminding him just go play every day, learn every day and you're going to get better every day."

That's what a good development staff should do, and there were positives for Moniak during Lakewood's 5-4 walk-off win over Hagerstown on Thursday. He made a terrific running catch to rob a hitter of extra bases in the top of the third inning and moved a runner from second to third with nobody out in the bottom of the third by hitting the ball to the right side. The runner scored.

"There are things that don't show up in the box score that I've started to pay more attention to," Moniak said. "Instead of being frustrated that I grounded out to second base with a guy on second base, I got the runner over and got the job done. Looking at the positives in every game has definitely been a huge thing for me to do."

[Phillies promote pitching prospect Sixto Sanchez to Clearwater.]

Remaining healthy tops the list of positives for Moniak. That's the only way he can learn about the grind and stockpile the at-bats that should make him a better player in the future.

"The number one goal wasn't to hit .300," he said. "It wasn't to have this many home runs or this many RBIs. It was to play every day and stay healthy. We have a month left, so we're coming down the home stretch."

There is no reason to panic over Moniak's first full season.

"We can look at his numbers if we want and say this isn't good and that isn't good," Malloy said. "At the same time, we still have to understand the kid is just 19 years old in his first full season, hitting third in an order.  He has had to make adjustments, and it is only going to make him better. He's getting more breaking balls now than he did early on, but it's an experience every night and he's learning from it. He's going to be fine."

That all could be true. In fact, it is true that Moniak, who turned 19 on May 13, has not faced a pitcher younger than he is this season. Three or four years from now, a fully developed Moniak could be in the middle of the Phillies order and we will have long forgotten about his first full season of professional baseball at Lakewood.

But right now, all we can do is compare him with other players who have gone through the same level he is at this season at relatively the same age. Admittedly, that's kind of like Michael Phelps' Discovery Channel race against a great white shark, but it is all we have. And when you do the comparisons, Moniak does not come out favorably.

From 2010 to 2015, 71 high school position players were chosen among the top 50 players in each year's draft. Of the 71, 33 finished with seasons that would be considered better than the one Moniak is having right now. That's 46 percent, which might be acceptable if he was the 20th overall pick. If you compare him with players just in the 2016 draft, Moniak is having a better season than eight of the other 11 high school position players selected in the top 50.

Moniak, a lefthanded hitter, is batting .206 (20 for 97) against lefthanded pitching and .213 (23 for 108) with runners in scoring position. He does not deny that this has been the most frustrating season of his life, but he believes he will learn from it just as he has learned about hitting against the shift for the first time in his career.

"Dealing with failure, that's something I wasn't used to in the past," he said. "The big thing you have to realize is that if you go 0 for 3, you can't carry it into your next at-bat and you can't carry it into your next game."

Moniak has learned a lot in his first pro season, and the lessons have sometimes been difficult. He is probably not the next Bryce Harper, Carlos Correa, or Ken Griffey Jr., but he could still be a good big-league player.