Shuckers' Gatewood slugs pair of homers

Jake Gatewood has climbed deliberately up the Minor League ranks after being a supplemental first-round pick out of high school in 2014.
After a chilly April, the Brewers No. 17 prospect is definitely trending upward.

Gameday box score
Gatewood knocked a pair of solo shots -- his first multi-homer game since June 10, 2017 -- and drove in three runs on a three-hit day as Double-A Biloxi beat Mobile, 6-3, on Sunday at Hank Aaron Stadium. He's hitting .309 in May and .242 for the season after finishing April with a .167/.250/.333 slash line.
The Shuckers first baseman said his struggles in April that followed a solid 2017 season in which he finished in Biloxi were self-inflicted. He got away from what made him the 41st overall pick in the 2014 Draft, but once he realized what went wrong, it was easy to make the necessary changes.
"April felt like I was trying to do too much and I tried to reinvent the wheel, rather than sticking to what works," Gatewood said. "I tried a lot of different things and I think I got a little bit in my own head making adjustments, rather than sticking to what I knew worked. I was putting too much pressure on myself.
"But last year I always took notes when things were going both good and bad. I read some of those and got back to what I was doing well. This game is tough. You have to fight back, and one day I want to be able to tell my kids not to give up, but how can I do that if I'm just giving away at-bats?"

The 22-year-old started the afternoon by flying to center field in his first two at-bats before tapping into his power. In the dugout before his third at-bat, he thought back to a conversation he'd had with his dad, Henry, on the phone before the game. A few minor tweaks in his stance and swing, including keeping his chest over the plate, turned flyouts into long balls.
Gatewood sent a leadoff shot over the center-field fence in the sixth, breaking a 2-2 tie, then opened the eighth with a blast to left-center to give the Shuckers a 5-3 lead.
"Since I was 10 years old, I know that if I'm hitting it to center, everything is working right," he said.
Gatewood capped his fifth three-hit game this month with an RBI single to right in the ninth, scoring Brewers No. 20 prospect Troy Stokes Jr.
The main issue in his recent run of three-hit games has been not being able to string them together. In his four previous such outings, Gatewood followed up with an 0-for-4 night at the plate. He said that comes down to consistency against much stronger pitching than he saw on his way up to Double-A, along with a little luck.

"I've been lining out a bit in those games. In some of those, the balls just don't fall, but I've just got to keep focused," he said. "But I know I'm getting five at-bats every night, and I have to make every pitch matter at this level. Pitchers are good here. I'm facing quality guys every night, and the more experience I get facing this type of pitching, the more I'll be able to cut those gaps."
Jake Hager also collected three hits for Biloxi, including a run-scoring double.
Mobile's Connor Justus reached base five times with three singles and two walks and scored a run.