The Brewers keep finding teenagers with loud tools, and the latest one making noise is 18-year-old Luis Frias.
Frias, a Dominican Republic native, homered Saturday in a 7-6 loss to Charleston at Joseph P. Riley, Jr.
Ballpark, another reminder that Milwaukee’s international pipeline keeps churning. He wasn’t even on the club’s Top 30 Prospects list to start the season.
Now he’s up to No. 12 and edging into Top 100 territory.
“You don't see too many young players with two strikes put a swing like that [on the ball]; it's pretty special,” Wilson manager Eddy Morgan said. “We saw a home run this past weekend at Hickory, too, went 452 feet.
He's got all the tools, man. He's gonna be a special one.”
At 6-foot-2 and 177 pounds, Frias has the kind of frame that hints at more power coming. The left-handed hitter already brings serious bat speed, and the ball can jump off his bat at up to 117 mph.
He opened the season in the Rookie-level Arizona Complex League and tore through it, hitting .441/.518/.678 with four homers and 12 steals in 32 games. A lot of that contact stayed on the ground, but the results were impossible to ignore.
Now in the Carolina League, Frias is the youngest player in the circuit and still adjusting. Through 22 games, he’s batting .239/.316/.420 with four homers, while putting the ball on the ground 59 percent of the time.
“That’s a young hitter that's learning,” Morgan said. “He'll start seeing some balls in the air as he gets older and he matures as a hitter, but we've seen some pull-side home runs that kind of knock your socks off.
It's all about his swing decisions, and tonight, he recognized how they were pitching him and got his 'A' swing off with two strikes. That's hard to do -- to get your 'A' swing off with 2 strikes -- and he did it.”
Morgan said Frias has already shown an ability to adjust from one at-bat to the next. On Saturday, after going 0-for-3 and falling behind 1-2, Frias laid off a couple of low pitches before turning on a pitch at the bottom of the zone from right-hander Jacob Hartlaub of the Rays and driving it over the right-center-field fence.
The power is obvious, but Morgan has also liked what he’s seen from Frias in center field. He’s still new to the position after spending most of his time in right and left field in the Complex League, so the angles and prep step still need work. Even so, he moves smoothly out there when everything clicks, almost gliding to the ball.
And then there’s the arm. Frias has already piled up two assists for the Warbirds, and he nearly had a third when Ryan Cermak singled up the middle with two outs in the ninth. Frias charged, fired a strike to the plate, and had the runner beaten by several steps before catcher Kevin Garcia couldn’t handle the throw.
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