Cooper Pratt’s first weeks in the majors looked a lot like the Brewers’ usual developmental script: patient at the plate, selective to a fault, and not yet doing much damage. That changed in a hurry Tuesday.
Pratt entered the doubleheader hitting .204/.313/.222, with only one extra-base hit in 64 plate appearances. The on-base skills were there - eight walks and just 11 strikeouts - but the bat hadn’t brought much threat with it. Then he came to the plate nine times Tuesday, drew three walks and ripped two extra-base hits, boosting his career OPS by .091 in a single day.
The swing speed tells part of the story. Of the 115 tracked swings Pratt has taken since his call-up, six of his 12 fastest have come in the last two days.
His double down the left-field line came on the third-fastest swing of his young career, and his triple to right field came on the 21st-fastest. For a player whose scouting reports have long pointed to raw power in his frame and swing, that’s a meaningful sign.
The Brewers seem to think he’s ready to let it play.
That doesn’t mean Pratt has suddenly turned into a finished power hitter. His double was a ground ball, and two other hard swings Tuesday stayed too low and never got out of the infield.
As our Jack Stern has already laid out, Pratt is still more than a small adjustment or a few weeks away from becoming a true power bat. But he can be more dangerous than he’s looked so far.
That matters for the Brewers, who have built a reputation for bringing young hitters along carefully. Pat Murphy, one of just two active managers whose background is mostly as a college coach, runs a club that often asks hitters to let the ball travel, work counts and stay disciplined in the zone. That approach has shaped the early stages of plenty of Brewers careers, including Brice Turang, Jackson Chourio and Caleb Durbin, all of whom needed time before their offense caught up.
Pratt appears to be in that same phase, only now the leash looks a little longer. The Brewers wanted him to learn the strike zone first, and they’ve used him in ways designed to help him grow, even if that meant some rough early results.
But this week showed the upside still waiting underneath the caution. He can draw walks.
He can hit the ball into gaps. He can make outfielders turn and run.
The hope when he arrived was that he could lengthen the lineup in a way neither Joey Ortiz nor David Hamilton could. At first, that didn’t happen. Now, after a quieter apprenticeship, Pratt is starting to look like the player Milwaukee believed was in there all along.
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