Welcome to Sliders, a weekly in-season MLB column that focuses on both the timely and timeless elements of the game.NASHVILLE — Scouting intuition only works if the team acts on it. A scout will push hard to draft a favorite prospect, and when the bosses take too long, it can be too much to bear.This is how it was for Scott Nichols, an area scout for the Milwaukee Brewers, in 2023. Years earlier, Nichols had been right about another Mississippi kid, pitcher Brandon Woodruff, an 11th-round pick who became a two-time All-Star. Now he’d fallen for another, a can’t-miss high school shortstop named Cooper Pratt.Nichols told the Brewers that Pratt reminded him of the Atlanta Braves’ Austin Riley and the Baltimore Orioles’ Gunnar Henderson, dynamic young stars on the left side of the diamond. To Nichols, Pratt belonged in the first round. Instead, it took 182 picks for the Brewers to call his name.“After the third round, I turned it off,” Nichols said. “I was like, ‘This is crazy,’ because we still hadn’t taken him. His dad was texting me, ‘What’s going on?’ I told him, ‘I turned it off, Russ, I was so upset.’ Then my supervisor called and said, ‘We’re taking your boy here.’ That was the sixth round.“Cooper was at Ole Miss picking up his parking pass. He goes, ‘Thank you so much.’”Pratt wanted to sign with the Brewers then, and he wanted to sign with them again in early April. In both cases, the timing worked out just right.Three years ago, the Brewers sensed that the industry was shying away from Pratt over signability concerns. That’s why they let him fall to the sixth round, after they’d saved enough from their bonus pool to meet his $1.35 million price.“We waited,” said Matt Arnold, the Brewers’ president of baseball operations, “but at some point, I got nervous, too.”This spring, however, the Brewers wasted no time. Before Pratt had played a game above Double A, they signed him to an eight-year, $50.75 million contract, with $15 million club options for 2034 and 2035. At 21, Pratt could soon get the call to Milwaukee, where the Brewers have gotten little production from shortstop but are dominating the National League Central, as usual.“If you would have told me in 2023 that I’d be here in 2026 and (taken) the path that I’ve been on in the minor leagues, I probably would have laughed,” Pratt said before a game this week at First Horizon Park. “It’s been kind of a wild ride, to be honest, and every stop has been fantastic from Low-A to here. Obviously you want to get to The Show, but it’s not a bad place to be here in Nashville.”MLB would love to expand someday to the thriving Nashville market, one of the most popular stops in Triple A. But while Pratt’s contract is major-league, he’s still with the Sounds, not the Brewers, another promising prospect waiting for his shot.“He got off to a little bit of a slow start this year, but he’s definitely heated up and he’s done a really nice job, especially recently,” Arnold said. “I think it’s just more consistency, more reps. He’s still a young kid in Triple A that hasn’t even spent half a season there. So we want to play the long game with him and make sure that he’s ready to go when he gets to Milwaukee. But obviously we believe in this kid and I’m really excited for his future.”Pratt won a Gold Glove last season with Double-A Biloxi while stealing 31 bases and posting a .343 on-base percentage. He hit only .238, though, and was batting .156 through April 23 this season. Since then, he is 30 for 104, while continuing to show the varied skill set that enticed the Brewers to make the deal.“He could go up right now,” said Rick Sweet, the longtime Nashville manager, who compared Pratt’s progression to that of Brice Turang. After excelling as a Triple-A shortstop, Turang has handled second base so well that he won a Platinum Glove and starred for Team USA at the World Baseball Classic.“When Turang played for me (in 2022), he was 22, and I look at Cooper Pratt at 21 and he’s ahead of where Turang was,” Sweet said. “He’s going to hit, and he’s starting to hit now. We just had to get him focused on competing in the game. You get to that level where all of a sudden pitchers are pretty good, and for the first month he’s barely hitting .100. So he had to learn how you compete at this level, but Cooper Pratt’s going to be a major-league shortstop.”He may not be the only one: Jesús Made, ranked this week as the No. 1 overall prospect by The Athletic’s Keith Law, is playing shortstop at Double A. With Joey Ortiz (.529 OPS) and Luis Rengifo (.533 OPS) manning shortstop and third in Milwaukee now, it’s easy to see Pratt and Made holding down those spots, in some combination, for many years.“He was made to play this game,” said Nichols, who stays in close touch with Pratt. “He loves it, he wants to work and he knows the game. He was one of my all-time favorite players. I loved the frame, I thought he would stay at shortstop. All it is now is just getting consistent at the plate, and he’s hitting the ball harder, making some really good contact. He’s a big-league shortstop right now. Everybody says it.”The Sounds list Pratt at 6-foot-4 and 195 pounds, roughly the size of Troy Tulowitzki, the former Colorado Rockies star who was one of his favorite shortstops growing up. (The other, he said, was Brandon Crawford, because his travel team was the Giants.) Pratt is starting to look the part now, with the contract off his mind.“I’m still on the same trajectory that I’d be on even if I didn’t (sign),” he said. “Now the burden’s off my back and it’s just: Show up to the ballpark and play. The first month was probably the hardest, and then after that you just realize, ‘Who cares?’ It just doesn’t matter anymore. Just play.”