Two top Brewers prospects save Milwaukee from Spring Training embarrassment

As Milwaukee Brewers fans anxiously await the arrival of the 2026 regular season, when games start to matter once again, everyone was thankful that Sunday afternoon's Spring Training contest with the San Francisco Giants fell into the "meaningless" column. The Brewers, who ended up losing the game by a score of 7-1, were nearly on the wrong end of some rather embarrassing Spring Training history.

2021 American League Cy Young Award winner Robbie Ray, who projects to be the Giants' No. 2 starter behind Logan Webb this year, was first to the mound for San Francisco. Ray had the good stuff today, tossing five perfect innings with eight strikeouts against a Brewers' lineup that included several expected starters. Ray struck out the red-hot Jake Bauers twice in his perfect outing before turning things over to the bullpen.

The trio of Carson Seymour, Triston Beck, and Matt Gage covered the next three frames and did so while maintaining the perfect game that Ray began. The Brewers had some close calls, including a 110 mph line drive off the bat of Garrett Mitchell in the 8th inning that was run down by center fielder Jared Oliva, who was a member of the Nashville Sounds in 2025. However, when the game entered the top of the ninth, with the Giants' sporting a seemingly insurmountable 7-0 lead, not a single Brewer had reached base.

On to try and finish off the Giants' rare attempt at a Spring Training perfect game was the hard-throwing Gregory Santos who signed a minor league deal with San Francisco back in mid-December. Without the heroics of two top Brewers prospects, what ended up being a brutal loss for Milwaukee could have been a far more embarrassing piece of Cactus League history.

Brewers prospects Cooper Pratt and Blake Burke save Brewers from being on wrong end of a Spring Training perfect game

After getting both Jacob Hurtubise and Reese McGuire to ground out to start the inning, Santos brought the usually checked-out late-inning Spring Training crowd to their feet as they hoped to witness a rare piece of baseball history. However, while facing the Brewers' No. 4-ranked prospect, Cooper Pratt, Santos couldn't find the zone; he walked the 21-year-old Pratt on five pitches, and the lone strike was a borderline call.

Now with Milwaukee's first base runner of the game standing on first base, the Giants' faithful down in Scottsdale were still hoping to see a no-hitter, which is still a rarity in the generally high-scoring Cactus League contests. The Brewers' No. 18-ranked prospect, Blake Burke, had other plans. The slugging first-baseman ripped a 107 mph ground ball down the first-base line, that snuck past the glove of Jake Holton and ended up in the right-field corner. Pratt scored from first, and Burke strode into second base with an RBI double that ended both the no-hitter and shutout for the Giants.

Burke ended the 2025 season on a hot streak with the Double-A Biloxi Shuckers that has continued into the spring exhibition season. Though he's had just six at-bats in the Cactus League, Burke now has two hits and an RBI to his name.

On what was a rather disheartening day for the Brewers' offense, seeing Pratt and Burke come through in the clutch to avoid an even more disastrous outcome for Milwaukee was great to see. Both Pratt and Burke figure to be important parts of the Brewers' roster at some point in the near future, with the former expected to start the season as the Triple-A shortstop, and the latter destined for the starting first base job in Double-A.