A League That Requires Fewer Swings is a Great League for Garrett Mitchell

[Matthew Trueblood]

Image courtesy of © Sam Navarro-Imagn Images

It's only been 72 plate appearances. On the other hand, Garrett Mitchell made his big-league debut 1,334 days ago, and even with the 72 plate appearances he has this season, he's only amassed a totla of 515 in the regular season for the Brewers, so let's not look a gift 72 plate appearances in the mouth. We have to allow ourselves to be pleased that Mitchell isn't hurt, but we can be even more excited about this: In 72 plate appearances, Mitchell is batting .273/.437/.436.

That's a strange-looking batting line, because it's still early and the season stays strange into May, no matter how early it begins these days. In fact, it's extra strange this year, because the ABS challenge system has altered the game, in obvious ways—the challenges themselves—and in subtler ones. It's one of the subtler but important impacts of the system's implementation that might just make Mitchell viable for the long haul, in multiple ways.

Firstly, as you might guess from the huge gap between his batting average and his OBP, Mitchell is swinging rarely and walking often so far this season. He's only offered at 39.4% of the pitches he's seen, down from a career norm (to whatever extent he's been able to establish a norm, given all the injury disruptions to his career) over 44%. That's allowed him to walk 16 times in 72 trips, an extraordinary 22.2% clip that is (obviously) unsustainable. Even if he walks 13% or 15% of the time, though, he'll be a darn good player. The question is whether he can sustain that lower but still robust kind of rate, and the answer is affected by the presence of the ABS system.

It's not just about the ability to challenge, though. Mitchell has only challenged once this year, and he lost that appeal. Instead, the effect here is the fact that the strike zone is smaller now. With the implementation of the computerized zone, there are (perhaps imperfect, but) objective upper and lower boundaries of the zone based on each player's height, rather than idiosyncrasies of their stance or the umpire's interpretation of the rule book's definitions of the hollow of the knee. Starting last year, the league informed umpires they would be graded on a stricter standard as ball-strike callers, and the shrinking of the margin for error produced a slightly smaller zone. This season, that's only been more true; it turns out that this way of structuring the zone compresses it vertically. The plate is still the same width, but the zone is shorter and blockier.

That's true in theory; it wouldn't have to be true in practice. In practice, though, umpires are responding to the league's training and feedback by giving the smaller zone now prescribed by altered rules and the input of computers. Mitchell isn't alone in responding to this by swinging less often. Of the 199 batters who had a qualifying number of plate appearances last year and are qualifying so far this year, 123 have either kept their swing rates flat or reduced them. Only 43 batters have increased their swing rate by at least two percentage points; a whopping 86 have reduced it by at least that much.

The percentage of pitches marked as being within the strike zone is down this spring. So is the rate at which pitches taken by the batter are called strikes. Throwing out all challenges by either side, the percentage of taken pitches called a strike so far this season is 30.1%. It was 31.7% in both 2023 and 2024, and 31.1% in 2025. That difference sounds small, but around the edges of the zone, it gets big in a hurry. The league, as a whole, is walking 9.9% of the time. The last time the global walk rate was this high in April was in 2009 (9.8%, essentially tied). Except for 2019, the league walked less than 9% of the time each April from 2011 through 2024. Now, it's nearly 10%. The arrival of ABS has made swinging a less valuable thing to do.

That brings us back to Mitchell. There are two very good reasons why not swinging as much (and being rewarded for that patience) is good for Mitchell. The first, obviously, is that he whiffs at a calamitous rate, when he does swing. He's seen 325 pitches this year, and swung at 128 of them. Fifty-eight of those swings have resulted in whiffs—an almost unfathomable 45.3% rate. You can't swing and miss that much and be a good hitter, unless you do everything else well as an offensive player. That was obvious and ineluctable before the ABS change. Now, it still feels obvious, but maybe it's a bit more negotiable. If you minimize the number of times you swing and the league rewards that approach because of a small strike zone, that's one step in the direction of permitting production amid a choking cloud of swing-and-miss.

Part of doing everything else well is having a swing that produces damage when one does make contact. The good news is, as we get a longer look at the healthy version of Mitchell and his swing, it's increasingly clear that he checks that box. His average bat speed of 76.4 MPH is borderline elite. Add to that one number the fact that he has a relatively short stroke with average-plus tilt and a deep contact point, and the company he keeps gets interesting. We've talked a lot about the interaction of those numbers recently, in the contexts of Brice Turang's successes and Joey Ortiz's failures, so hopefully, it's already becoming clear to you that having a fast, steep swing with a deep contact point is a good thing. If not, though, here's the list of players (besides Mitchell) who have average or better tilt and a contact point at least 1 inch closer to their body than the average, on swings that average 74 MPH or higher.

• Nick Kurtz
• Jo Adell
• Jake Bauers
• Luis Robert Jr.
• Mike Trout
• Shohei Ohtani

Yes, this kind of swing usually leads to plenty of whiffs. Mitchell is at the extreme end, even in this cohort. But he also swings considerably faster than the older Trout and Ohtani, and his plate discipline (augmented this year, but always solid) is far better than that of Adell or Robert. He belongs to a group of hitters who blister the ball when they do put the bat on it. He's doing a better job of working uphill and lifting the ball this year. Yes, it's possible to be highly productive with an atrocious whiff rate, if you're a patient hitter in the ABS Era who can also generate elite power. 

The other reason why a lessened need to swing is good news for Mitchell might sound callous, but it's legitimate: fewer swings means less risk of an injury. Mitchell has twice wrecked his shoulder on wild slides into bases, but some of his injury issues throughout his career stemmed from the violence of his swing and the vulnerability of his hands early in the motion. Swinging less often and being less primed to swing means less chance of an oblique strain or a sports hernia injury. It means less chance of a broken hamate bone. It puts less strain on the back. 

We've talked endlessly about Mitchell's potential over the years, but also about all the things mitigating it. Would he ever make enough contact to access his talent in full? Could he stay on the field long enough to prove himself either capable or incapable of that? This season, the league is different, and the changes germane to Mitchell's game are all good news for him, on both fronts. That doesn't mean he'll keep hitting this way all season, or that this year will more than double the number of MLB plate appearances he's had in his career. The chances of that kind of thriving, healthy campaign are better than ever, though, because Mitchell is responding correctly to the environmental shifts around him—and because the talent unlocked by those shifts is so loud, in the first place.

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[wiguy94]

@Matthew Trueblood Do you think it's a coincidence that Mitchell is doing the worst he's ever done in his career against pitches in the upper third while also doing the best he has in his career in general? I was talking about this over on BCB but part of me wonders if just accepting he's terrible against pitches up and not trying to reduce whiff or hang against them more could be a net positive if he's doing so much better in the rest of the zone and laying off pitches out of the zone. It makes him a more extreme and polarizing profile but that might be the profile that is best for Mitchell?