Zach Buchanan

zbuchanan@enquirer.com

It had the makings of a Eureka moment for Tyler Stephenson. It was mid-July, and the young Cincinnati Reds catching prospect was in Arizona rehabbing from a wrist injury in the rookie league. Outfield prospect Jesse Winker was doing the same, and the pair became dinner buddies for about a week.

Winker was three years Stephenson’s senior, and had traveled the path upon which the catcher was just now embarking. Both were first-round draft picks out of high school, always playing against players significantly older than they were. Winker knew something about trying to live up to those expectations.

Stephenson was in his first full professional season with Low-A Dayton, and things hadn’t been going well. He’d hit just .196 the first two months before his wrist injury, missing two weeks in the middle of it due to a concussion. He was trying too hard at the plate.

Winker told him how he’d struggled early on in Dayton too, how he’d allowed a bad game to turn into a bad week. He told Stephenson to trust his talent, and shared some tips on how to stick to an approach at the plate instead of swinging reactively. It was the counsel Stephenson needed.

He returned to Dayton and mashed, hitting .375 with a .965 OPS in his first seven games back. Then the wrist started hurting again, and he landed back on the disabled list. He’d play just seven more games the rest of the way, and ultimately ended his season with wrist surgery in mid-August.

He’ll have to wait until 2017 to show if Winker’s words really sank in. His 2016 season, cannibalized by health issues, sure didn’t reveal much.

"It wasn’t the season I was hoping for," Stephenson said.

Stephenson’s performance entering his first full season in the pros was highly anticipated. He’d been taken 11th overall in the 2015 draft, and a solid performance in rookie ball in Billings left the Reds with the impression that he was ready for a challenge the following season.

So, at just 19 years old, Stephenson started the year in Dayton, where he was 2.5 years younger than his competition on average. The Reds were going to learn a lot about their catcher of the future.

Instead, they learned very little. Stephenson played just 39 games with Dayton in 2016, and played very few of them consecutively. The longest he was ever healthy was the first 18 days to start the season, and the stop-and-start nature of his year contributed to a disappointing .216/.278/.324 batting line.

“It’s difficult to evaluate his play,” said Jeff Graupe, the organization's player development director. “I do think there are things we can look at that he was able to accomplish this season. I think any time you have a player who just has a couple nagging injuries that keep him off the field, it’s frustrating for all parties.”

The biggest bugaboo was the nagging issue with his left wrist, the one that guided the bat for the right-handed hitter. While catching posed no issues, swinging the bat meant swinging through pain unless Stephenson was hitting off a tee.

The injury cropped up in May, costing him more than a month of the season. He landed on the disabled list twice more thereafter, playing in only 14 games the rest of the way. He still manages to take a positive outlook on things, though.

“It was tough,” Stephenson said. “Looking back at the season, I probably learned more about myself and the game of baseball than I would have playing. I think that’s going to help me down the road, kind of dealing with all the adversity. The ups and downs I had this year helped me grow as a player.”

With the wrist issues stunting his offensive development, Stephenson worked hard with catching instructor Corky Miller on the mental side of being a catcher. He'd called his own games since he was a freshman in high school, but took strides when it came to managing a (much older) pitching staff and game-planning against (much older) hitters.

More importantly, he learned to slow the game down, sometimes singing to himself in his head when in the crouch in order to prevent his mind from panicking at all the information he had to process.

“I felt like the game was going 500 miles an hour,” Stephenson said. “I was panicking about everything."

Now he heads into the offseason having completed his rehab, and will enter spring training fully healthy for the first time since early May. It’s possible he could return to Dayton for the 2017 season, for another chance to prove himself against Low-A pitchers. (Such a move would also alleviate a catching logjam, with 2016 draft pick Chris Okey likely moving up a level or two.)

The Reds remain confident in Stephenson’s ability. Just as such an injury-shortened year didn’t validate his draft slot, it doesn’t invalidate it either. After all, he only turned 20 in August.

“If he’d been able to stay healthy, would have had an extremely productive season based on all the things that he was learning,” Graupe said. “I’m confident his numbers would have gotten to where we thought they would.”