Can Mickey Moniak save the Phillies in center field? He says he’s ready to try

READING — Wearing a bright red big-league batting helmet atop a black minor league uniform, Mickey Moniak looked more like a plot device than a rehabbing center fielder as he dug into the batter’s box on Tuesday morning. The sky was gray and the stands were filled with field-tripping middle schoolers and the second-place Phillies were a thousand miles away, but here in the leadoff spot was someone to pay attention to. A hero in the middle of his journey? Or a meaningless subplot? The fate of a season — nay, an era! — hangs in the balance.

Or something like that.

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“I’m just trying to be me,” Moniak said after going 2-for-5 in a rehab appearance for double-A Reading, his latest step on the road back from a hand injury that has sidelined him since early April. “I’m trying to go up there and kind of pick up where I left off in spring training and just kind of help the team win. Be a piece that can just go out there, play baseball, play solid baseball, have good at-bats, and just complement the guys we have up there now. That lineup is still very dangerous, and I’m excited to be a part of it.”

It remains to be seen whether Moniak can rescue the Phillies from a center field situation that has left them with few other options. But you can understand why plenty of fans are looking at him as a potential savior. Few positions epitomize the Phillies’ failures of the post-2011 years like center field, and few players epitomize position like the one-time schoolboy star whom the franchise drafted No. 1 overall in 2016.

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Whether you called it a rebuild, or a tank, or a period of conscious uncompetitiveness, the Phillies lost a lot of games in an effort to restock their roster with a new generation of talent, and Moniak was supposed to be the kind of player who made it all feel good in the end. Maybe, just maybe, the end has yet to arrive.

The last time Moniak set foot in First Energy Stadium, he was a 21-year-old adrift. He’d spent the previous three years failing to establish himself even as a middling prospect, let alone one who’d warranted his draft position. In more than 1,100 minor league plate appearances, he’d hit just 11 home runs with 245 strikeouts while failing to reach a .700 OPS in either of his full seasons.

As far as renaissances go, Moniak’s 2019 season at double A hardly was the 17th century. But his once-wiry frame began to fill out, and the power came with it, and by the end of the following season he’d done enough to warrant a September call-up to the big league roster. The Phillies gave him an earlier look last season, starting him seven times in a nine-game stretch in mid-April, but he struck out in 12 of his 25 at bats, reaching base six times. The lone highlight was his first career home run, a three-run shot off of Giants righty Anthony DeSclafani in a 6-5 Phillies win on April 21.

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He returned to the roster for a few more cameos throughout the season, but never to the starting lineup. In 55 career big league plate appearances, he is 6-for-47 with 22 strikeouts, seven walks, and that one extra-base hit.

Moniak looked like a different hitter this spring, racking up six home runs and four doubles in 37 Grapefruit League at-bats. He appeared set to make the big-league roster until he was hit by a pitch in his final spring training at-bat, fracturing his hand. Six weeks later, little has changed. In four rehab outings, he is 6-for-15 with two extra base hits.

After playing nine innings in the field on Tuesday, he said he feels ready for regular duty, though the plan is for him to remain in Reading through Thursday. On Friday, the Phillies return north for a weekend series in New York against the Mets.

“I’m not going to sit here and play GM,” Moniak said. “Like I said going into spring training and I’m doing the same thing now, and that’s controlling what I can control. If I do meet the team in New York, that’s awesome. I’ll be ready. But if not and they feel I need to get more at-bats, that’s what I’ll do.”

What the Phillies need to do is find out if Moniak can play. The quicker, the better. They entered the season needing center field to be something other than a life-sucking abyss at the bottom of the order. Thus far, that objective has gone unmet. Heading into Tuesday night’s game in Atlanta, their center fielders had combined to hit just .202/.255./.318 for a .573 OPS that ranked 12th among 15 National League teams at the position.

Of the group’s 10 extra-base hits, five came in a seven-game burst by Odúbel Herrera in late April. Since then, Herrera is 10-for-52 with three doubles. Roman Quinn has been excellent on the basepaths once he gets himself there. But the second part of that equation has been a problem.

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It’s easy — and perhaps comforting — to lay the blame at the feet of Andy MacPhail and Matt Klentak. But the problems extend much further back than the former regime’s drafting of Moniak and Adam Haseley at No. 1 and No. 8 overall in 2016 and 2017.

Moniak and Haseley — the latter of whom the Phillies dumped to the White Sox this spring — are just two of an incredible stretch of 16 first-rounders that yielded nothing of value beyond Aaron Nola. Not coincidentally, that run began with the drafting of center fielder Greg Golson at No. 21 overall in 2004 and continued four years later with Zach Collier at No. 34. Other notable misses include second-rounders Anthony Gose in 2008 and Kelly Dugan in 2009.

Given his pedestrian regular season production, Moniak has a lot to show in order to establish himself as anything more than a dream. Then again, that dream is all the Phillies have.