Published On: June 10th, 2013

Of the dozen or so East Carolina baseball players who have left campus to play in summer leagues, David Lucroy probably has the best away-from-Greenville digs.

Lucroy and his father, Steve, drove from Greenville to Milwaukee early Tuesday morning to get David set up for his stint with the Lakeshore

(Wis.) Chinooks of the Northwoods League. Unlike most summer-league players who are taken in by host families in unfamiliar towns, Lucroy will be staying with his brother, Jonathan, starting catcher for the Milwaukee Brewers.

“I guess you could say that my brother is going to be my host dad,” said Lucroy, an Umatilla, Fla., native who was part of the Pirates’ weekend pitching rotation this season and was named a Louisville Slugger freshman All-American earlier this week. “I’m going to live with him the whole summer and I’ll hold down the fort while he’s traveling away to different cities where he’s playing. It will be pretty fun.”

Steve Lucroy was planning on staying in Milwaukee for about two weeks and then heading back down to Florida.

David, one of Steve and Karen Lucroy’s three sons, said he plans to fully soak in his summer experience in a major league city. Jonathan and David both hope to watch each other play, which doesn’t happen often.

“It will be neat to see him pitch,” Jonathan wrote in a text message Tuesday, hours before a game against the Oakland Athletics. “I haven’t seen him throw in about four years or so. It will be a good experience for both of us.”

Jonathan Lucroy is in the midst of his fourth season with the Brewers. His MLB highlights include when he became the first catcher since 1920 — the year RBIs were first recorded — to drive in at least seven runs in more than one game in a season last year.

Last Friday, he went 5-for-5 with two home runs and four RBIs in an 8-5 win at Philadelphia.

David said Jonathan has given him valuable advice for on and off the field. He specifically remembers a phone conversation this spring when Jonathan stressed the importance of keeping pitches down and away in the strike zone.

David Lucroy, who played for the Morehead City Marlins of the Coastal Plain League last summer, is coming off a redshirt freshman campaign at East Carolina in which he made 14 starts and went 4-2 with a 2.49 ERA. He struck out 82 and walked 42 in 721⁄3 innings.

Lucroy made his first start for the Chinooks on Friday. He went 52⁄3 frames, allowing three runs and three hits with seven strikeouts.

“The biggest thing for me is to work on my command, with my fastball mostly,” said Lucroy, who kept up with his brother’s success during recent months by using the MLB package on his Xbox to watch Milwaukee games. “I think the most important thing is to learn to go deeper into games. …

The bottom line is to develop my ability to throw strikes whenever I want to.”

Contact Ronnie Woodward at rwoodward@reflector.com, 252-329-9592 or follow

@RonnieW11 on Twitter.

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