clearing ahead?
A corrective lens in his right eye may have put Joe Gray Jr. back on track in his fourth pro season. The Hattiesburg High product, a second-round pick by Milwaukee in 2018 and a highly regarded prospect in the system ever since, got off to a slow start this season at High-Class A Wisconsin. The right-handed hitting outfielder went through a miserable 1-for-48 slump in June before finally realizing something was wrong with his vision, according to a story in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Gray had Lasik surgery in the off-season, but the vision in his right eye somehow got worse. “It just sucked that it took me half of the season to figure that out,” he told the Journal Sentinel. The Brewers’ No. 13 prospect was hitting .163 before getting the corrective lens; he is up to .191 as of today with a seven-game hitting streak. He has 12 home runs and 16 stolen bases. Coming off a year in which he batted .252 with 20 homers and 23 steals, Gray, only 22, had hoped to make Double-A Biloxi this season. Now that he is back to, in his words, “having fun,” he still might get that promotion before the Southern League season ends in mid-September.