Competition is a beautiful thing, and the Milwaukee Brewers have gotten the best out of Joey Ortiz since Cooper Pratt has been called up.

Pratt's callup meant that Ortiz would be fighting with David Hamilton for everyday playing time, but an injury to Hamilton has left manager Pat Murphy no choice but to play Ortiz everyday.

Thankfully, that decision has been easy to justify with the way Ortiz has been swinging the bat.

With Ortiz on a hot streak, that's rubbed off on Pratt as well. The rookie finally hit his first home run on Monday, July 20, and it just so happened to come against former Brewers ace, Freddy Peralta.

"That’s a cool one to get the first one off of, for sure,” Pratt said, according to MLB.com. “I don’t think I’ll ever forget who I hit my first one off of.”

The Brewers chased Peralta after 5.1 innings, and his day was officially done when Joey Ortiz hit a three-run blast. For what it's worth, Peralta was responsible for two of those runners.

Pratt discussed whether or not waiting for his first homer in the major leagues has been weighing on him, "Yes and no. I mean, obviously I wanted to do it. I got close a couple of times. But I didn’t go in there trying to hit it. It was in the back of my head, but I was just trying to hit a fastball. Then I hit a slider and it snuck out.”

With 86 at-bats to begin his big league career, Pratt is slashing .267/.356/.360. His SLG is just above his OBP, and his OPS sits at .717 with a 1.0 WAR. 

Over his last 20 games, the 28-year-old sports a .300 batting average with an OPS of .894. Knowing Ortiz has only hit five home runs this season, it's crazy to think that four of those have come in this 20 game sample size. If that's not impressive enough, 11 of his 26 RBIs have come in this span as well.

Ortiz and Pratt both contributed in a big way to the Brewers latest 8-3 win over the New York Mets. That marks four wins in a row since the All-Star break as Milwaukee has taken the reigns of having the best record in all of baseball, 63-37.

Coming into the year, no one could've expected Pratt and Ortiz would be playing as big of roles as they are, but the Brewers are sure glad to have things work out the way they are.

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