MILWAUKEE – Cooper Pratt had been waiting for the call to the big leagues ever since signing an eight-year contract with the Brewers in April. He expected the deal to relieve some pressure, but instead he discovered it brought a new kind of pressure. Early in his season with Triple-A Nashville, he struggled.
“I was like, ‘Man, what did I do?’” Pratt said. “And then I started to play better day by day, pitch by pitch, winning at-bats. Not so much worrying about the statistics as much as the process going into it.”
On Sunday afternoon, in the sixth inning in front of a home crowd in Nashville, manager Rick Sweet walked toward shortstop and pointed at Pratt.
It was time.
“It was magical, man,” Pratt said. “It didn’t quite feel real. I flew out the next day and now I’m here. I was in high school three years ago, and now I’m here.”
The Brewers formally promoted their No. 4 prospect per MLB Pipeline (No. 63 overall) to the Majors for Tuesday night’s 2-1 win over the Guardians, and while the 21-year-old grounded out in all three of his at-bats, missed a sign for a hit-and-run and airmailed a throw for his first Major League error, Pratt was smiling at the end of the night.
What will Pratt remember most?
“That we won,” he said. “The vibes were fantastic.”
Pratt was Milwaukee’s starting shortstop for a game in which Brice Turang and Garrett Mitchell hit solo homers, lefty starter Robert Gasser pitched into the sixth inning without allowing a run and reliever Aaron Ashby became the first pitcher in the Majors to reach double-digit victories, giving the Brewers their 12th consecutive victory in series openers.
With no first MLB hit or RBI to commemorate, the Brewers clubhouse staff still found a keepsake for Pratt. There was an authenticated baseball in a case at his locker after the game with the label. “FIRST MAJOR LEAGUE DOUBLE PLAY.”
It was from the 6-4-3 turned by Pratt and Turang in the second inning -- which the Brewers hope is the first of many.
“We tried to keep it light for him,” said Turang, who told Pratt when it was time to take the field at the start of the game, then watched and laughed as Pratt ran out to shortstop, turned around and found himself all alone. “I know he’s thinking about a million things, just like everybody on their debut. So we tried to keep it light and remind him it’s a game. This is fun.”
To clear a spot for Pratt, the Brewers designated infielder Luis Rengifo for assignment, cutting ties with a switch-hitting veteran who signed a one-year, $3.5 million free-agent contract at the start of Spring Training, but didn’t pan out. Rengifo departed with a .534 OPS in 185 at-bats.
Pratt is expected to take over as the regular shortstop, pushing Joey Ortiz to a third-base timeshare with David Hamilton. Brewers manager Pat Murphy said he’d had multiple discussions with Ortiz about Pratt’s looming presence in the months since Pratt signed his contract, and indicated that he would move Ortiz and Hamilton around to spell Pratt and second baseman Brice Turang at times.
“The pieces fit easily. This is a kid that we signed long term, Cooper,” Brewers manager Pat Murphy said. “We feel confident that he will be our shortstop of the future. And he’s going to play.”
Murphy’s ties with Pratt’s family go back decades. Two of Pratt’s uncles, Scott and Trent, played in the Minor Leagues, and Trent Pratt played for Murphy at Arizona State in 1999 and 2000 before transferring to Auburn. Then Murphy got to know Cooper Pratt over the past two years because he was in big league Spring Training camp with the Brewers.
“I’m confident he’ll be a team, winning player. That’s who he is,” Murphy said. “In our organization, that’s a priority. …
“I don’t candy-coat it, and I’m not looking for a soft landing. I said, ‘Cooper, if you’re looking to take the pressure off, go someplace else. Because there’s pressure, and there’s standards here to play winning baseball. If you’re not ready for that, this is going to be a lost cause.’”
Of course, Murphy and the Brewers believe Pratt is ready for that call, or they wouldn't have pushed him through the Minor League system so aggressively. At 21 years, 302 days old on Tuesday, Pratt would be the third-youngest player to start a Major League game at shortstop this season behind the Pirates’ Konnor Griffin, the Mariners’ Colt Emerson and the Tigers’ Kevin McGonigle.
There are only six players in Brewers franchise history who have started a game at shortstop at a younger age, and two of them, Robin Yount and Paul Molitor, are in the Hall of Fame. The others are Ed Romero, Gary Sheffield, Rick Auerbach and Enrique Cruz. The only other Brewers player to start at shortstop for the Brewers before his 22nd birthday, Orlando Arcia, was a few days older than Pratt when he made his debut.
Does Pratt feel ready?
“Yeah, I felt ready out of Spring Training," he said. “It didn’t help that I sucked at the beginning of the season, but I never thought that I wasn’t ready. Once I started getting in my groove, I stopped focusing on when it was going to happen, and I just [thought], ‘OK, I’m here. Just play baseball. It will happen one day.’ Then everything started taking care of itself.”
It’s only the latest show of confidence in Pratt, who slipped to the sixth round of the 2023 Draft because of signability concerns, but got an above-slot bonus, then got an eight-year contract in April which guarantees $50.75 million and could pay much more with three club options.
He was hitting .241/.349/.386 with six home runs and 17 stolen bases in 58 games with Triple-A Nashville before learning that he’d been promoted during the sixth inning of Sunday’s game against Durham.
The timing meant a lot to Pratt since his father, Russell, doesn’t fly, and had plenty of time to make the drive from the family home in Oxford, Miss., to Milwaukee for Cooper’s debut.
Meanwhile, Cooper’s mom, Heidi, had just landed in California with one of Cooper’s three brothers, Jett, for a baseball tournament. When she turned on her phone, it was filled with urgent text messages.
“I saw my mom’s text first,” Heidi Pratt said. “It just said, ‘It’s happening.’”
She called her husband.
“I left within five minutes of him letting me know he got called up, and I drove for 45 minutes and realized I was driving the wrong way. I had to turn around,” Russell Pratt said.
His mind was in another place. Russell comes from a family of six boys, all of whom dreamed of playing Major League Baseball, then had kids who dreamed the same.
Cooper is the first in the family to make it all the way.
“You can’t put it into words,” Russell said. “But his heart doesn’t beat. He’s so level, so steady. Never too up, never too down. He’s just a good, humble kid.”
He’s not just here, he’s here to help.
“They know how to win,” Pratt said of the Brewers, “and I just want to be a small part of them, any way that I can.”