Photo via Milwaukee Brewers - Facebook
Cooper Pratt - Milwaukee Brewers
Milwaukee Brewers shortstop Cooper Pratt high fives teammates in the dugout (June 17, 2026)
Three years ago this week Brewers rookie shortstop and top prospect Cooper Pratt heard his name called in the MLB Draft, but he had to wait a little longer than one might expect for a player who quickly reached the majors.
Pratt, who at the time was an 18-year-old high school senior, was the 182nd overall selection when the Brewers took him in the sixth round that year. In most other sports it would be virtually unthinkable for an impact player like Pratt to be left on the board so long. His story, however, is an illustrative case in how the MLB Draft is different from most other sports’ entry processes.
Baseball has one of professional sports’ longest developmental paths: Even the game’s fastest rising prospects typically spend years working their way through the minor leagues before making their major league debuts. That process is further complicated, however, by the fact that players entering professional baseball come from an array of backgrounds and levels of baseball experience. In MLB players can be drafted out of high school, junior college or their junior or senior years of college (some sophomores are also eligible).
Convoluted Process
Even beyond that, however, MLB rules regarding signing bonuses further convolute the process. Each team goes into the draft with a pool of money they’re allowed to spend on that year’s selections but the value of their pool is determined by combining the “slot value” of each of their picks, so teams with higher picks or more draft picks will have larger draft pools than others. Teams are allowed to exceed their bonus pools but face escalating penalties for doing so.
Stay on top of the news of the day
Subscribe to our free, daily e-newsletter to get Milwaukee's latest local news, restaurants, music, arts and entertainment and events delivered right to your inbox every weekday, plus a bonus Week in Review email on Saturdays.
Teams are not, however, required to evenly distribute that money. That opens the door for a variety of strategies but the Brewers’ prevalent choice has been to spread it around, selecting players who are willing to sign for less than their slotted value early in the draft and using the savings to attempt to go “over slot” later in the draft to get players who have more upside than the usual value of those picks.
Pratt’s case is a perfect example of this: The 29 other players selected in the sixth round in 2023 signed contracts with bonuses ranging from $20,000 to $515,000. The Brewers, however, paid Pratt $1.35 million to skip out on a college commitment to Mississippi and sign his first professional contract, more than twice the high end of that scale. Not only did Pratt sign for more money than any player selected in the sixth round, he also commanded a higher bonus than any player selected in the fifth round and all but two players selected in the fourth round. Before he had played a single professional game it was clear that the Brewers felt that Pratt was significantly more valuable than the typical player still available in the sixth round.
Well Below Budget
The Brewers saved the money they spent on Pratt, meanwhile, by staying well below budget elsewhere. That season’s first round pick, Brock Wilken, signed for almost $1 million below the slot value for the #18 overall selection. Their selections in the Competitive Balance round, second, fourth, fifth, seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth rounds all also came in below slot and left the organization with resources available to chase high upside talent elsewhere: In addition to Pratt the Brewers went over slot that year for first baseman Eric Bitonti and pitcher Bishop Letson, who are both ranked prospects in the organization.
Of course, saving money on draft picks doesn’t always mean getting a lesser player: One of the aforementioned draft picks the Brewers signed below slot was Indiana pitcher Craig Yoho, who signed for just $10,000 following his senior season with the Hoosiers. Yoho is also a ranked prospect according to MLB Pipeline and has pitched in the majors in each of the last two seasons. The Brewers also saved some money by drafting college catcher David Fry and signing him for just $10,000 in the 2018 draft, and Fry is currently playing his fourth major league season with the Guardians and is a former All Star.
The 2026 MLB Draft begins this weekend and the Brewers have the 25th, 66th and 102nd overall selections (they also had the 67th pick but traded it to Boston this spring). Cooper Pratt’s rapid rise to the majors, however, is an example of how evaluating draft picks requires more than just knowing when they were chosen.
