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What to Make of Brewers’ Extension of Cooper Pratt

Originally posted on New Baseball Media
By Chris Studley | Last updated Mar 31, 2026 10:19 AM ET

By all accounts, it looks like Brewers prospect Cooper Pratt will be in Wisconsin for a while. The former Minor League Gold Glove winner reportedly signed a multi-year extension with the club before his MLB debut. Per multiple outlets (including USA Today), it’ll be an eight-year pact worth roughly $51MM and also include two club options at $15MM for each year.

A Look at Pratt

Three years ago, the Brewers gave Cooper Pratt a $1.35MM bonus as a sixth-round pick out of high school. Since then, he’s steadily developed into a future Major Leaguer.

In the ACL that year, Pratt had a very good run in a small sample size. He slashed .356/.426/.444 with three extra-base hits over 12 contests. The following season, Pratt hit well in Low-A, as the young infielder slashed .294/.394/.395 with 25 stolen bases and 17 extra-base hits (three home runs) with Carolina. He finished that year with five home runs in 23 contests with High-A Wisconsin.

Last season, Pratt’s offensive numbers were more complex. The now-21-year-old slashed .238/.343/.348 with eight home runs and 31 extra-base hits across 120 contests. He did swipe 31 bases with Double-A Biloxi.

He performed well in big league camp for Milwaukee this past spring. Pratt slashed .294/.405/.294 with 10 hits (all singles) in 16 contests.

The 2025 season was a weird year where Pratt bookended his season with three-home run months in April & August, and not much in between. However, those numbers don’t tell the entire story of how he performed offensively.

Pratt doesn’t elongate the swing too much, leading to a shorter stroke that screams contact hitter. And that also screams ability to catch up to the fastball; that was exactly the case in the spring, as he only whiffed on four-seamers 10% of the time in the Cactus League. And overall, he whiffed on pitched 19.4% of the time in the exhibition slate.

However, as we noted in our Brewers’ 2025 farm review, Pratt hit a lot of fly balls and not so many ground balls. There is the possibility he could develop into a 15-20 home run hitter.

High take hitter, not surprising given how many walks Pratt picked up in the Minors and how high his on-base percentages were.

The hallmark of Pratt’s game is his defensive work. Pratt routinely made highlight-reel plays defensively. The speed also helps.

The Brewers have yet to announce the signing as of this move. Pratt is not on the team’s 40-man roster and does not need to be added until the end of the 2027 campaign.

Analysis

There’s precedence for the Brewers doing something like this. Over two years ago, Milwaukee locked up then-prospect Jackson Chourio to a monster extension before his MLB debut. Now, that deal looks like a bargain.

Pratt’s extension is a little different. For one, it’s not as large as the eight-year, $82MM extension that Chourio signed. Two, Chourio’s production in the Minors made him look like a transcendent prospect — and he’s mostly lived up to the hype.

As for Pratt, there is a high floor here. He could very well develop into a defense-first infielder who battles in at-bats and gets on base. The upside of him being an elite defender, and potentially one who can hit 15 to 20 home runs, makes this quite the move if it works out.

It also may mean shuffling around the Brewers’ infield in the short-term. Right now, Milwaukee does have Joey Ortiz and David Hamilton as options on the left side of the infield, with Brice Turang firmly entrenched at second base.

This article first appeared on New Baseball Media and was syndicated with permission.

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