MILWAUKEE – Freddy Peralta is 24 years old. It’s easy to forget if he’s already drafted parts of four seasons in a Brewers uniform and still tried this year to prove he belongs in the starting rotation.
Luis Urías is 23 years old. He was a few seasons away from the nine-best prospect of baseball by MLB pipeline, and by 2020 he had about as miserable an acquaintance with the Brewers organization as one could get. There was a broken hand, a case of COVID-19, then a quiet few months in a utility roll.
But there is a place for patience with players who are talented enough to make the Major League when they are barely old enough to evoke a toast. The Brewers’ patience with Peralta paid off. They hope the 6-3 victory over the Cubs at American Family Field on Monday is the start of something similar for Urías.
“I think the Milwaukee Brewers will always have to connect young players,” manager Craig Counsell said the other day.
Peralta and Urías led to the fifth win in Milwaukee in the last six games, all against division rival Cubs and Cardinals. Peralta hit ten batsmen in six more electric innings and left as part of the Brewers’ six-run exam. Urías, who rode from a 1-for-21 ride, delivered the biggest hit of the innings – a pinch-hit-three-double game that gave the Brewers the lead.
Two more hits that sought their battle kept the rally going, Jackie Bradley Jr. with an RBI triple and Keston Hiura with an RBI single, to make a winner of Peralta after the right-handers held the Cubs one run on two hits and two. runs in the fourth double-digit dropout performance of his budding career.
Peralta did not allow a run in his first ten innings of 2021 before Kris Bryant picked up the batting barrel quickly and quickly and pulled in the Bulls of the Brewers for a solo home run leading the fourth innings. How did Peralta react?
He has retired the last nine batsmen he has faced.
“I do not know how he hit the pitch with great contact,” Peralta said of Bryant. “I got angry at that one.”
It started in the fourth series with three runs. Joc Pederson watches a break ball. Javier Báez swung so wildly after a break ball and missed that Báez lost control of the bat and threw to the hill, forcing Peralta to dance out of the way. Peralta struck straight three times as he waved Jason Heyward at a change below the zone.
Peralta said he likes the moniker ‘Fastball Freddy’, but it does not fit. It’s Four-Pitch Freddy, who helps explain how he made just two appearances against the Cubs in a six-day series, keeping them in one innings to one run on three shots. The first start was more dominant in the break ball. Monday it was more fast balls, with the crockery reserved for big spots.
“I think we’re looking at how hard it is to get big league players out of one place,” Brewers coach Chris Hook said. “It’s stressful. Freddy could do it, he could take guys out with one pitch, but I think there’s a freedom he feels and I think that’s what you’re seeing now. “I have a slider. I have a change. I have a curveball. I have options. I never feel like I’m stuck and I have to make a perfect pitch. ‘I think that’s what we’m excited to see about Freddy is the bloom of a pitcher that can throw four stands in each count. ”
Peralta put it this way: ‘I feel I have more space, more space I can go to. It’s different. “
Now if the Brewers can only help Urías to feel the same sense of freedom. They cleared up the doubt that he was the main shortstop last week when they swapped Orlando Arcia for Atlanta for two relief that the Major League was ready for. Though it was good for Urías from a baseball perspective, he said he was sad to see a friend go.
In the last 13 innings, he completed the ride without hits, and he batted 0.074 / .242 / .111 on Monday night after putting up a .602 OPS in 120 record appearances last year.
“I mean, I think it’s a tough game, especially striking,” Urías said. ‘You can go 1-for-20, and then you can go 10-for-20. This is how it is, this game. And I’m trying to stay positive and tell myself it’s 162 games, it’s a long season. Obviously I will keep working every day, to show up and get the results I want. Today, it gave me more confidence, to get that hit. It was a fun game. ‘
The Brewers hope there is more.
“This is what organizations do. You have to do evaluations, and you have to believe in them, ‘Counsell said last week. ‘This is how it works.’