Exclusive | How star rookie Bryce Eldridge is fighting through struggles amid terrible Giants season

DENVER — The bases were still 60 feet apart the last time Bryce Eldridge let his emotions get the best of him on a baseball diamond.He was 9 or 10 years old, on the mound in the regional finals for his Little League All-Star team and it didn’t go well.“I just completely melted down because I wasn’t pitching well and we lost,” Eldridge recalled in an interview with The California Post.

“For lack of a better word, I was just being a b—- on the field.That was something that stuck with me.

I was very embarrassed.My dad ripped me.

Learning moments when you’re younger change how you are now, you know?”That’s not to say he doesn’t still get frustrated.This recent stretch at the plate, in fact, has gotten to him.Even if he doesn’t show it.“He’s very calm, you never see him throwing a bat or being mad,” admired outfielder Heliot Ramos, who went through the same adjustments breaking into the big leagues that Eldridge is going through now.

“It’s a mental battle.… I’m guessing he feels [frustrated] because at the end of the day we’re humans.

But he has very good control of his emotions.”It’s in every opposing scouting report nowadays: Eldridge can hit the fastball.He’s laying off early breaking balls.

Pitchers are getting ahead of him with soft stuff in the strike zone, putting him in a hole — and one of the more prolonged slumps of his young career.Going into Saturday’s game against the Rockies at Coors Field, it had been five games since Eldridge last drew a walk, remarkably his longest stretch to date.Dating back to his last homer, 12 games ago, he is batting .163 (7-for-43) with a .475 OPS.He’s struck out 16 times in that span, the same number he had over his previous 23 games.Soon enough, though, Eldridge will make an adjustment and regain the upper hand.“It’s a fun little cat and mouse game,” hitting coach Hunter Mense told The Post.

“The more stuff they start to get on you, then the more you have to start...