Zach Buchanan

zbuchanan@enquirer.com

GOODYEAR, Ariz. -- Movie premieres don’t seem to mean what they used to, first with the advent of midnight showings and now with “sneak previews” that begin at reasonable hours an entire day early. If only there were such options when it came to baseball prospects.

Cincinnati Reds fans have been breathlessly awaiting the major-league arrival of top prospect Robert Stephenson almost since the right-hander was drafted in 2012. That just comes with the territory when you’ve been ranked the organization’s top prospect by Baseball America three years in a row.

So even though he’s closer than ever – Stephenson reached Triple-A last year – the 22-year-old has become well practiced at blocking out the noise.

‘If you let it get to your head, it’s going to affect your gameplay,” Stephenson said. “For the most part I’ve handled it pretty well. There are parts of my game I need to work on, but they’re unrelated to the title.”

Stephenson is among a large group of young pitchers vying for a spot in the major-league rotation as camp begins, although there are factors working against him.

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In that group are several other pitchers who at least saw time in the majors last year and are perhaps further along in their development. The Reds also have a higher stake in making sure Stephenson is ready before he’s called up, and little incentive to rush him to the majors for an expected losing campaign.

But the door is slightly open if the former first-round pick can force his way through it.

“Spring training is going to be a great venue for him to put on display his growth and maturity as a pitcher,” manager Bryan Price said. “But you also have to pitch and have success.”

That success hasn’t exactly found Stephenson since he entered the minors as a 19-year-old in 2012 – he has a career 4.50 ERA in four minor-league seasons – but no one doubts the tools are there. His fastball has flirted with triple digits before, and he’s showcased two plus secondary pitches – a curveball and a change-up.

It’s just a question of making those puzzle pieces look like the picture on the box. Like many young fire-ballers, Stephenson initially thought he came preassembled but has since learned that getting professional hitters out isn’t as easy as pumping his fastball by them.

“They have to live through it,” said bullpen coach Mack Jenkins. “We try to teach them, but they have to experience it most of the time to grasp it and believe you. The good ones learn from their failures and make adjustments.”

Stephenson made a big one before last season that helped inch him closer to the majors. The righty’s change-up wasn’t much more than a junk pitch after he entered pro ball, but he featured a devastating one when he was in high school. The Reds had concerns about the pitch’s effect on his arm, though, and asked him to change grips after Stephenson was drafted.

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After the 2013 season, in which he had a 4.75 ERA in 136 1/3 innings, Stephenson petitioned pitching coach Mark Riggins, then serving as minor-league pitching coordinator, for permission to go back to his old change-up. Riggins assented, with the caveat that Stephenson tweak the grip a bit to relieve pressure on his forearm.

The pitch quickly went back to a plus offering, and Stephenson pitched to a 3.68 ERA and struck out 10.2 batters per nine innings in 14 Double-A starts before a midseason promotion. (His strikeouts dipped and ERA rose upon his first taste of Triple-A.)

“It wasn’t just a quality pitch, but it was a finished pitch,” Price said. “It had that type of quality to it, something he could use to put away a hitter.

Stephenson felt his curveball backed up a bit from decreased usage last year, but thinks it’ll come back around the more he works it in this spring. That would give him two strong secondary pitches to go along with an intimidating fastball.

The next step is figuring out where the fastball is going. Stephenson has walked four batters per nine innings each of the last two seasons. In 2015, he took a bit off his fastball in an effort to be more precise, although it didn’t make much of a dent in his walk rate.

He felt it made a difference nonetheless.

“I definitely had more in the tank, but at a certain point I almost felt uncomfortable letting it go,” Stephenson said. “I just felt I would have a lot better time locating the ball at a little lower velocity than at a higher velocity. It seemed like that helped out a lot.”

There may be a happy medium between velocity and command for Stephenson, and he’ll try to reach it in spring training. Jenkins said he sees a couple minor mechanical tweaks the young righty should make to help with control, and Price believes with the right delivery Stephenson can have solid control no matter how hard he throws.

Whatever the solution is, it’s clear Stephenson will have to find it before he finds himself in the big leagues. A head-turning spring could make that sooner rather than later, but even the later might not be all that late.

“This will probably be the longest look I’ll get at Robert since he’s been in the organization,” Price said. “We’re looking forward to him getting to the big leagues this year.”