Cooper Pratt's Bat Speed, Hello

[Matthew Trueblood]

Image courtesy of © Jeff Curry-Imagn Images

It's neither a secret nor a coincidence that, by the standards of big-league ballclubs, the Brewers are run rather like a college team. After all, their manager is one of just two active ones whose background is mostly as a college coach. Pat Murphy has acknowledged that, though he doesn't consciously try to bring the model that made him successful at Notre Dame and Arizona State University to bear in his management of Milwaukee, there's a degree to which his skill set and the way the small-market Crew run things match nicely to what a college program has to do in order to thrive.

One way in which that shows up on the field is the collective discipline of the lineup, and not just in terms of swing decisions. When the team brings any of its endless line of young players to the big leagues—or even when they (re)acquire guys who have been in the majors elsewhere, as they did when they dealt for David Hamilton in February—they ask them to let the ball travel. It's important to the team that those guys learn to recognize pitches and to frustrate hurlers' attempts to lure them out of the zone and strike them out. They coach hitters to be patient and to hit the ball deeper in the hitting zone than they normally would. It's an essential part of their offensive DNA, including and especially when it comes time to get a clutch hit.

This can make their young hitters look awfully unimpressive, at first. Brewers fans will well remember the ugly early days of Brice Turang, Jackson Chourio and Caleb Durbin, who took anywhere from a few weeks to a few months to tap into their offensive upside. In the meantime, those guys also get deployed strategically, sometimes being held out of the lineup when the matchup favors another player and other times being fed into the woodchipper in a bad matchup so they can learn the ropes. Almost no Brewers hitter comes up and gets to their power quickly. In service to the team and to optimize their development even after they matriculate to the majors, those guys are asked not to swing as aggressively as they otherwise might, in addition to not swinging as often as they otherwise might. 

Cooper Pratt is the latest exemplar. He came to the majors an unfinished product, because the team has sufficient confidence in Murphy and his coaching staff to finish off development after a player gets to the parent club. Pratt's arrival makes the team deeper and better defensively, and eventually, having him up right now will pay off. He might be better in 2027 than he would otherwise be, because he's here now. He might hit the turbo button and achieve the stardom that is very much possible for him in 2028, because he got some of the toughest adjustments to the bigs out of the way in 2026.

That can make the first stint for players like Pratt frustrating, though, because you know this guy has a good chance to be good, but he's not good yet. Pratt entered Tuesday's doubleheader batting .204/.313/.222, with just one extra-base hit in 64 plate appearances. He'd already drawn eight walks and had only 11 strikeouts, but there was little lethality in his lumber.

On Tuesday, alone, he raised his career OPS by .091. He came to bat nine times, drew three walks, and cracked two extra-base hits. This week, it seems, Pratt has been let off the leash.

Of this 115 tracked swings Pratt has taken since coming up, six of the 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; his triple to right field came on the 21st-fastest. Pratt is a big guy, and scouting reports have always cited some latent raw power in his frame and his swing. We knew he was capable of more than he showed when he first came up. Now, the team seems to believe he's ready to let it eat.

That doesn't mean Pratt will suddenly go on a power binge any time soon. His double was a grounder; two balls he hit on similarly vicious swings Tuesday stayed too low and didn't escape the infield. As our Jack Stern has already laid out, Pratt is more than a small tweak or a few weeks from becoming a full-fledged power hitter. However, he can be more dangerous than he's looked so far. He can get hits, as well as simply keeping the line moving by drawing walks. He can split gaps and find corners. He can make outfielders run backward now and then. We haven't seen much of that so far, because when he got here, the Brewers focused first on ensuring he could organize his zone properly and produce what the team needs in certain situations where the batter's stats aren't the focus.

As we've seen this week, though, that talent is still in there. It could burst out of him down the stretch, if only in the form of a lot of singles and doubles, now that Pratt is swinging the way he's always been capable of. The hope when he came up was that he might lengthen the lineup, in a way neither Joey Ortiz nor David Hamilton could. At first, he didn't do so, but that was during an apprentice phase. Now, he's ready to deliver on that promise.

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[WAN2]

"Lethality in his lumber?"  Nice.

[homer]

.443 xwOBA .522 xSLG the last 10 days (also Garrett Mitchell, IMO)

[GasserFace]

That is an interesting concept that the Brewers require their young hitters to follow this approach.  My guess is that teams like the Orioles do not follow this same development path.  How many of the top prospects from the Orioles have started off their careers on fire, but have struggled later on.  Henderson, Adley, Cowser etc all looked like superstars but each have declined since each had early success.

The Brewers were not known for developing hitters but the recent track record of Turang, Chourio, Mitchell etc have given me some real hope that Pratt, Lara, Made, Fischer, Burke and Adamczewski will make similar progression at the MLB level, when appropriate.

To be able to navigate this development of players in key positions and still win at unprecedented levels is completely next level.  I have to believe that they choose 1-2 candidates annually to bring up and develop.  Pratt and Lara this year.  I'm interested to see who emerges for this development path in 2027.