Phillies 2019 season preview: Outfield prospect Mickey Moniak
It has been a rocky road for Phillies prospect Mickey Moniak since being selected No. 1 overall in 2016. Can he make some progress this season?
The bar has been set quite high for Mickey Moniak since being selected No. 1 overall back in 2016 by the Phillies. He drew comparisons to then-Marlins outfielder Christian Yelich, which would now be quite the comparison considering he won the NL MVP last season.
Moniak started off his professional career well enough in the Gulf Coast League with a .284/.340/.409 line and 124 wRC+ in 46 games. Unfortunately, things have not gone as well for Moniak since then.
In 123 games in Low-A Lakewood in 2017, Moniak managed only a .236/.284/.341 line with 109 strikeouts compared to 28 walks. He looked overmatched during his time there, which isn’t that much of a surprise considering it was his age-19 season and he was 2.5 years younger than the average player there.
Moniak made some progress last year, but his overall numbers still weren’t great in High-A Clearwater. He finished the season with a .270 batting average but a .687 OPS in 114 games. He showed promise from June on with a .288/.332/.444 line and 120 wRC+. The hope is those three months are a sign of things to come in 2019.
In the last two years, Moniak has fallen out of top prospect consideration entirely. He was still an MLB.com Top 100 prospect last year, even after his rough full-season debut. Now he is not on any Top 100 and ranks No. 9 overall in the team’s system per MLB.com and No. 10 overall per Baseball America.
Can Moniak recapture what made him a No. 1 overall pick three years ago?
Moniak’s role in 2019
Despite not exactly knocking the cover off the ball in 2018, Moniak will likely move up another level this year. This would mean Moniak will start the season in Double-A Reading, which could provide an artificial boost in his numbers. Any strides he makes there will be taken with a grain of salt due to that artificial inflation Reading provides, but any upward progress will be welcomed.
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All the progress does not need to be made this year. The team’s outfield has stability for the future with Odubel Herrera, Andrew McCutchen, and Bryce Harper all signed for the coming seasons. Aaron Altherr, Nick Williams, and Roman Quinn all provide depth in the outfield if the team needs it. Moniak is still quite young, and he has plenty of time to find his way to success.
Moniak is the second-best outfield prospect in the system.
The player who ranks ahead of him (Adam Haseley) is far closer to the majors. Haseley played 39 games in Double-A last year and has had far more success in the minor leagues. If things break right for Haseley, he could be in the majors by the end of the year or the start of next year. Meanwhile, Moniak still has to show offensive capabilities in the higher levels of the minors.
Power will never be a part of Moniak’s game at the plate (even if he starts hitting home runs at Reading), so the focus will be on generating a large amount of contract. An offensive output like Jean Segura‘s (.304/.341/.415 line in 2018) could be a potential ceiling for Moniak, but it’s still far too early to start talking about that.
Projections for Moniak in 2019
As mentioned previously, Moniak should see better numbers to start off the year considering he is in Double-A Reading. Even if Moniak breaks out in Reading, other players have as well just to flame out in Triple-A or the majors.
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A bigger key development for Moniak will be in his plate discipline. Strikeouts have been a huge issue for him, racking up 100 in the last two years. Coupled with a low walk rate, Moniak’s plate discipline is one of the bigger things holding him back from success. Maybe it comes from being overmatched due to his youth, but whatever the source is, it is a glaring issue.
If Moniak can find a way to put the ball in play more, he should have more success. He had a .334 batting average on balls in play in Clearwater last year. If he maintains that rate and can cut down on strikeouts, his batting average could climb close to .300. That is a huge if for Moniak given how his first few seasons have gone.
Cutting down on the strikeouts is the main thing I (and the team) likely want to see from Moniak this year. If he can do that, the rest of his offensive game will come into place. At this point, no one is expecting Moniak to become Yelich, but if he can at least be a quality starting outfielder, that will be better than where he is now.
If Moniak does succeed this year in Reading, he could make his way to Triple-A Lehigh Valley. It wouldn’t surprise me if he spent the whole year in Reading as there could be a logjam of outfielders in Lehigh Valley.
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In the event Moniak still struggles at the plate in Reading, serious questions will start coming up. He may follow down the path of Cornelius Randolph into relative prospect obscurity while Haseley and others gain more notoriety.