Quietly, top pick Moniak opening some eyes
LAKEWOOD, N.J. » Marty Malloy spent 12 years in the minor leagues, the 102nd player selected in a baseball draft dragging his duffel bag onto crowded buses and his hopes through empty boxscore lines. For his patience, he would win an 11-game major-league career, good for one home run. One.
The grind. That’s what Malloy calls baseball at the low-minor level, and few better know its every peril, the back-door compliments, the back-door strike-threes. And that’s why he watches Mickey Moniak every day, every at-bat, every whistling line drive into centerfield. He watches. And he nods. Yeah.
That’s the guy.
“He made a play in center field that he cuts a ball off and throws a guy out at second base trying to stretch a single into a double in a one-run ballgame,” Malloy said. “And you see that. You see that. Or you see him facing a 24-year-old pitcher in the South Atlantic League and he’s 19 and he’s thrown a slider and he hits it to leftcenter. And you say, ‘There it is.’”
Malloy manages the Lakewood BlueClaws, the Phillies’ low-Class A minor league entertainment option along the Central Jersey shore. So for this summer, at least, it’s his job to help grow Moniak, who in the 2016 draft was selected 101 spots higher than he was in 1990. Moniak was chosen No. 1 overall, good for a $6.1-million check and expectations to match.
Moniak is in his second minor-league season, including 46 games last summer playing against rookies in the Gulf Coast League. He is two months past his 19th birthday and 3,000 miles from his San Diego home. And he remains far from the Phillies’ immediate outfield plans, as he should, just over a year since his high school graduation.
“It’s been good to this point,” Malloy said. “But there is an education part of how to go about your business. How to sleep. How to eat. The bus rides. We’re going on a 14-hour bus ride today after a game at 11:05. Mental toughness. He’s been good.”
Moniak went 0-for-3 in a 1-0 victory Monday over the Charleston RiverDogs, striking out twice but smothering the final out in centerfield to preserve Nick Fanti’s no-hitter. He is hitting .265 with four home runs, but has played every game, making the right plays, and, as his manager indicated, the smart ones. Regularly hitting third in the lineup, he’s struck out just 71 times in 85 games, and he has three triples, 18 doubles and no trace yet of a New Jersey accent. The grind … “Obviously last year I kind of got used to playing every day,” Moniak said. “It was not a full season, but just to get the feel for it was nice. This year, you’ve got the bus rides. You’ve got long trips. Weird sleeping schedules. It’s definitely been a huge educational process, learning how to deal with pitchers throwing you backwards, throwing 3-1 breaking balls. And you are seeing more off-speed than you are used to.
“It’s been a huge learning process. I’ve felt like I’ve come a long way since the beginning of the year, and I am excited to finish out the year and move on into the offseason and get ready for next year.”
By next year, Moniak should be bumped up half a level to Clearwater. Eventually, he will go to Reading, then to Allentown, and then into the outfield at Citizens Bank Park. That is not as much a timetable as it is a requirement. The Phillies cannot afford to have made a mistake on a teen-aged hitter drafted that high. Nor is there any burning hint that they have. Moniak is still growing, physically and professionally. It’s why he insists he is not concerned that, in about a calendar year, he has hit just five professional home runs.
“You are talking about a kid who is hitting in the three hole at 19 fresh out of high school,” Malloy said, long before the early morning game. “And he’s hitting in the three hole in the South Atlantic League. I mean, he’s held his own. His numbers are OK. He’s going to get bigger and stronger. But he’s learning how to play the game every day.
“It’s a bright future.” Moniak is the first top overall pick to play in the South Atlantic League since Bryce Harper in 2010, who hit .318 with 14 home runs at age 18. Two years later, Harper was in the big leagues at age 20, getting plunked by Cole Hamels, just as a welcome message. As for Moniak, he is taking his hits, and he is providing some too, to all fields, in some tough spots. Baseball America still rates him as the No. 17 overall prospect in the sport. So he is closer to Bryce Harper than he would have been to Marty Malloy.
“I get to see him every day, and he’s the same guy when he walks through the front door as he is when he walks out the door at the end of the night to go home,” Malloy said. “I’ve played with guys who were 0-for-4 and you knew they were 0-for4. When they were 4-for-4, you knew they were 4-for-4. He’s not that guy. He has bad days like everyone else, but it’s how he acts. That’s the unique thing.”
He’s a multi-millionaire satisfied with his chance to learn, with loose plans to play in the instructional league in the offseason and an even looser schedule to justify the Phillies’ commitment.
“He’s going to be a hitter,” Marty Malloy said. “He’s going to be a hitter.”
Yeah, he keeps telling himself. That’s the guy.
To contact Jack McCaffery, email him at jmccaffery@21st-centurymedia.com; follow him on Twitter @JackMcCaffery