PHOENIX -- Who will be the Brewers’ Opening Day shortstop?

Orlando Arcia, the answer for each of the past four seasons, hopes the answer stays the same.

“I’m working towards that,” Arcia said. “But at the end of the day, I don’t make that decision. They make that decision. All I can do is keep working.”

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Arcia, still just 26, finds himself with company this spring in Luis Urías, the former Padres prospect who was acquired in the fall of 2019 to compete with Arcia for the position, but who never got the chance in 2020 because of a broken hand in the spring and a bout with COVID-19 in the summer.

This spring, Urías is healthy and the Brewers want to get a long look at him -- as well as organizational newcomer Daniel Robertson -- as a shortstop. That means Arcia will move around more than usual, playing third base and perhaps some second base or center field.

Is it a battle for shortstop? Is it Arcia’s position to lose? Or are the Brewers subtly transitioning to Urías, but stopping short of coming out and saying so? Manager Craig Counsell has no incentive to answer definitively at this particular point in time, with exhibition play just beginning Sunday and more than a month to go before the Brewers must submit a lineup for Opening Day.

On Day 1 of camp, Counsell met with Arcia to explain the club’s thinking.

“This is about seeing Luis play shortstop, and I think [Arcia] understands that,” Counsell said. “The great thing about Orlando Arcia is he welcomes any competition you want to put in front of him. Any kind of competition. That’s a great trait that he has. It shows up for us, I think, late in the season and in the playoff situations we’ve been in the last couple years. I almost look forward to putting challenges in front of Orlando, because I think it brings out the best in him.

“It’s a great trait. He is one of my favorites because of that. That’s how he takes these things when you put them in front of him. ‘Put a hurdle in front of me and I’ll climb over it.’ That’s kind of his attitude. That’s a great way to approach these things.”

Arcia described his mindset as “continuing to put in the work and not taking any rest.” He said he’s not surprised that the Brewers want to look at Urías.

“It’s just part of it,” Arcia said. “We just both have to keep working hard and doing whatever we can to help the team win. At the end of the day, Luis can cover shortstop as well. Either one of us can play good defense in both places [shortstop and third base], so you have to keep working hard to get better and in the end, the decision, they’ll make it, so we have to work hard and find ways to make the team win.”

Arcia actually had one of his better seasons at the plate during the shortened 2020, with a career-best 96 weighted runs created plus to go with a .260/.317/.416 slash line. The slugging percentage was a career best. Defensively, the metrics suggest Arcia still isn’t the player the Brewers think he can be. His minus-5 defensive runs saved tied for second worst among MLB’s 20 qualifying shortstops.

“Orlando did a nice job,” Brewers president of baseball operations David Stearns said back in October, in the immediate wake of the 2020 season. “He improved his zone control. He started swinging at strikes some more. Swung at balls less. He took more consistent at-bats throughout the course of the season. I think that was an important step for Orlando.

“I think it's also important that we continue to remember -- that Orlando continues to remember -- that's a defensive position first. We certainly need offense there and competitive at-bats, but we're certainly counting on that position to be a really quality defensive position."

Game on for realigned coaching staff
The Brewers open Cactus League play on Sunday afternoon at the White Sox, representing the first opportunity for Brewers third-base coach Jason Lane and first-base coach Quintin Berry to take their positions.

Lane has been a big league coach for the Brewers since the start of the 2016 season and most recently coached first base, but moved to third base after the Brewers shifted longtime coach Ed Sedar into an advisory role in order to add Berry to the Major League staff. Berry will coach first base and instruct the team’s baserunners.

“From Jason’s perspective, the best thing we can do for him is start playing games,” Counsell said. “We’ve trained and talked with him, but you can only talk so much about what’s going to happen, then you have to experience it. You learn more from mistakes at that position than from being safe, if that makes sense. … That’s a big part of the spring for Jason, taking chances and testing your limits. Just like a baserunner going from first to third, you don’t find out anything by stopping at second. You find out when you get thrown out at third what your limits are.”

As for Berry, Counsell said, “Quintin has hit the ground running, I feel like. And I feel like we’ve given him a good core of baserunning people. I feel like we’re going to be good at baserunning this year. In general, I feel we have more team speed with adding Kolten [Wong] and getting Lorenzo [Cain] back into the mix. It really changes our team speed in a positive direction and our baserunning abilities in a positive direction.”

Last call

• Despite shortened games at the onset of the Cactus League slate slate -- the Brewers and White Sox have agreed to play six full innings on Sunday regardless of the score -- position players may play more innings of road games than is typical for early in Spring Training, in the interest of limiting traveling parties. As Counsell explained, “I think you'll see more guys just playing the whole game so that we take less guys. That's kind of something we've thought of. If we're going to play five or six innings, in a lot of cases, let's let one player play that five or six innings and then he'll have the day off the following day, even early in camp.”

• Drew Rasmussen started the day with a 98 mph fastball and Tyrone Taylor hit a solo home run high off the center-field batter’s eye and added a two-run double in the first intrasquad game of the spring on Saturday, a 6-0 Brewers win over the Brewers. Taylor is trying to fend off some organizational newcomers to claim a spot as a backup outfielder after posting a .793 OPS in a small sample (41 plate appearances) in Milwaukee last season.