Brewers skipper feels strongly about outfielder Sal Frelick's potential at third base

The Milwaukee Brewers have not been shy when it's come to considering players at positions outside of their current roles at the time. Sometimes that has led to players actually moving positions for games, other times it hasn't.

In 2018, Brewers third baseman Travis Shaw agreed to shift over to second for some games after the team acquired fellow hot corner man Mike Moustakas. "Moose," in turn, played games at second for the first time in his career in 2019

On the other hand, legendary Brewers outfielder Ryan Braun saw work at first during the spring on more than one occasion but only ended up playing a handful of games there in his regular season career. Some have hoped a similar situation would play out with Christian Yelich, but Milwaukee GM Matt Arnold has already stated that's not happening.

This spring, a new experiment has begun with young outfielder Sal Frelick being worked out on the infield at both second and third base. Well, perhaps experiment isn't quite the best way of putting it seeing as he does have some infield experience from back in his college days.

Even as he has played some games during some Cactus League games, it was reasonable to think that all of this was to give the team some added flexibility but that Frelick's destiny was still to primarily roam the outfield. Perhaps that will still be the case. But according to Brewers manager Pat Murphy, there may be as good a chance that it won't.

Brewers outfielder Sal Frelick's work at third base isn't just an experiment, the team thinks he can excel there.

Yesterday, Murphy was chatting with reporters about the Brewers roster, though according to Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Curt Hogg not directly about Frelick. That didn't stop the skipper from offering up a very interesting analysis of the youngster's potential at third base.

That Murphy brought it upon himself to make that mention of Frelick says a lot about how good the team thinks he can be at third base. It also proves that this has become, or always was, more than just adding some defensive flexibility to the Crew.

Getting Frelick some action at third base was always a plan that made sense for multiple reasons. For one, the Brewers have no clear starter at the position. On top of that, they also happen to have an abundance of riches in the outfield.

But even with all those outfielders, Frelick is as talented defensively as any of them, making it tough to want to remove him from that role. He is also still young and working to establish himself as a major leaguer after being promoted to The Show for the first time midway through last year. Adding a position switch is often something a team isn't willing to do to those types of players.

Frelick isn't any old player, though. He's a former first round pick and at once was a top prospect in the Brewers system. Most importantly, if a baseball lifer like Murphy thinks he can excel in this possible new role, we should probably take his word for it.