Cincinnati Reds 2015 1st round draft pick Tyler Stephenson celebrated his 19th birthday on Sunday by taking the field against the Ogden Raptors. The catcher took advantage of the birthday luck and went 2-3 with a double, two runs scored, two runs driven in and he drew a walk. His contributions helped the Billings Mustangs pick up the victory on the road. Not a bad way to enjoy turning 19.
In his first trip to the plate he grounded out harmlessly to shortstop. He followed that up with a single to right field in the 4th inning, but was erased on a double play to end the inning. In the 7th inning he would walk to put two runners on and he would eventually score the tying run. The very next inning he would come up with two runners on and he would put the Mustangs in the lead by smacking a 2-run double to left field that put Billings ahead for good.
For the season the first pick by the Reds has hit .285/.368/.365 on the season despite being nearly three years younger than the average player in the Pioneer League. He has shown good plate discipline, walking 16 times and striking out 28 times in 155 plate appearances (good for a walk rate of 10.3% and a strikeout rate of 18.1%).
Stephenson has shown off good gap power, smacking 11 doubles on the season, but he has yet to turn in his first professional home run in the 38 games that he has played in. While the Pioneer League is hitter friendly, Dehler Park is the toughest hitting environment in the league, so that hasn’t helped.
Another part of that lack of home runs is that the now 19-year-old goes to center or to right field far more frequently than he pulls the ball to left field at this point in his career. While we are working with a rather small sample size of balls in play at this point, only 21% of the balls he has hit to the outfield have been pulled to left field. The catcher has hit the ball to right field 41% of the time he’s put the ball into the outfield and another 38% of the time he’s gone to center field.
Using the entire field and going with the pitch is a good plan at the plate and it would appear that Stephenson is doing just that, something you don’t see too often in young hitters. It may be part of the reason he hasn’t hit a home run yet, but eventually those are going to start showing up for the first round pick as there is plenty of power potential to tap into in the future.