Cooper Pratt Knows What's Coming, and He's Ready

Image courtesy of Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images

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It hasn't been easy, exactly. Life in the majors is not kind to young hitters called up primarily for their glove. Cooper Pratt has only seen an opposing starter for a third time eight times all season. Of his 249 plate appearances, entering Tuesday, 122 have come against relievers. Pratt has already faced 135 different pitchers in the majors. Through his first three seasons, Robin Yount went to the plate 1,661 times and only saw 171 different hurlers. Pratt is being asked to survive a league that's given home no opportunity to get comfortable, partially because he bats at the bottom of one of the league's most potent lineups. He also missed time with a hamstring injury last month, and those he only spent a minimum stint on the shelf, he wasn't quite himself when he returned.

Lately, though, he's very much himself. Pratt has hit for almost no power this month, but that's not for a lack of authoritative contact. In fact, he's produced a series of solid line drives and (as a result) a .315/.383/.370 batting line. In 62 trips to the plate, he's struck out just nine times and drawn six walks.

It's not just the results that have been pretty. Pratt's process has improved. He's not swinging any faster than he was during the height of summer—if anything, he's slowed down a tick—but he's meeting the ball more squarely and producing more exit velocity as a function of what was possible, given his swing and the speed of the incoming pitch:

That recent spike is because, seemingly, Pratt is more confident at the plate. His first-pitch swing rate is down this month, which has allowed him to work into some more favorable counts. When he does swing at that first offering, though, he usually stings it, because he's locked in on one pitch and one spot in those situations.

When ahead in the count, Pratt is swinging more often in September than in previous months. When behind, he's swinging less. It's all part of an approach whereby he's gotten more willing to draw walks and to force pitchers into the zone, and more assertive when they do come to him. That maturation is tough for any player to achieve within a season, but it's especially impressive work by a 21-year-old who has gotten so few chances to acclimate to specific pitchers and their plans against him.

For reasons both physical and mental, Pratt is much better at delivering the sweet spot to the ball lately than he was when he first came up. His swing speed ticked up after a few weeks in the majors not because he was actively trying to start hitting for power, but because he didn't have a good feel for how he was being pitched, and he needed the extra effort to produce hard-hit balls. Lately, he's looking more like someone who knows what's coming, and that's allowed him to swing smoother and with less conscious effort. He's not jamming himself nearly as much as he was early, and he's on time more often. When he mistimes it, he does so by less than he did earlier in the year.

In a perfect world—certainly, in the future the team envisions for Pratt and the one he envisions for himself—he would get a little more bat speed going and start lifting his hard-hit balls to the pull field with some consistency, to give him the power dimension currently missing from his game. That can wait, though. Right now, Pratt is on a roll. He's locked in on what teams are trying to do to him, and he's making sure it doesn't work. He's covering the inner edge of the plate better and using the middle of the diamond. Milwaukee's offense runs more on the strength of the bottom third of its lineup than does any other team's. They need Pratt, Joey Ortiz, Sal Frelick, Luis Lara and/or whoever else is batting in the bottom three spots each day to get on base and create chances for the more well-rounded hitters at the top of the order. Pratt is fulfilling his role beautifully. If this continues into October, he'll be an easy hero to overlook when the team makes a deep run—but very much a hero, nonetheless.