Anatomy of a Move: Taking Down Garrett Mitchell for Jake Bauers Saturday Night

Garrett Mitchell has had to sit and watch a lot this season--just as he did last year. Injuries continue to slow his development and prevent the Brewers from properly evaluating him as a potential long-term piece of what is a deep and talented outfield mix. He has just 113 plate appearances in the big leagues since the start of 2023, and nearly as many (87) in Triple-A, on rehab assignments.

In the first game of the second half, after another five days of sitting and waiting, Mitchell got the start in center field, and he looked good. In the third inning, he doubled into the right-field corner, and in the fifth, he hit a soft but promising liner the other way, only to see it intercepted at shortstop. In the seventh, he was called out on strikes, but it came in a full count. In those three trips to the plate, he saw 19 pitches, after having seen fewer than 140 in the big leagues all season before that night.

Because the game was a taut pitchers' duel, though, Mitchell's spot didn't come up again until there was one out in the 10th inning. Sal Frelick was at second base, having started the inning as the automatic runner. A single would give the Brewers the lead, but because they hadn't moved Frelick over (Rhys Hoskins grounded out to third), they did need a hit--or at least another baserunner. Mitchell didn't get his chance to change the game, though. Pat Murphy and the Milwaukee coaching staff elected to use Jake Bauers as a pinch-hitter, in Mitchell's stead.

That could have been a surprising, or even a hurtful choice. Mitchell is starved for chances to come up big for this team; he's been awaiting opportunities like that one for months. Mitchell, though, said he was unfazed.

"Fine. At the end of the day, it’s whatever it takes to win," Mitchell said Sunday, and his tone said that was an earnest feeling. "That’s what they felt like was the best course of action in that situation, and it’s always just about being ready for your opportunity. I don’t think too much about it."

Still, it was a peculiar move, to some extent. Durán is right-handed. Mitchell, a lefty, already held the platoon advantage. If the team had pinch-hit Eric Haase or Andruw Monasterio for Mitchell against a southpaw, it would have been a clearly comprehensible maneuver, but that wasn't the case. Did the team tell Mitchell any more about their thinking?

"There was no conversation that I had, but I was just told that I was being pinch-hit for, and I was like, 'Ok. Sure.'," Mitchell said. "It’s a collective effort, for sure. It’s a team game. Pass the baton to the next guy, and try to get things done. At the end of the day, whatever it takes to win, is what matters."

That's the right mentality. Though rarely thought of in these terms, a ball game can be similar to a soccer match. There's not necessarily any dishonor or harm in playing just 80 percent of a game; a substitution can reenergize the lineup, just as a relief pitcher can spare a team the risks that come with overwork by the starter. Still, the existence of a pinch-hit penalty--a systematic decrease in performance for hitters pulled cold off the bench--was established nearly two decades ago. To use a pinch-hitter, you have to not only believe they might be more ready than a tiring starting player, but see some tactical advantage to be gained in the process. That bump in expected value counteracts the value given up by going to the bench at all.

So, what were the Brewers thinking when they made the move?

"Bauers has been our best hitter off the bench," Murphy said. "In that situation, Bauers has been a great at-bat for us. Although he hasn’t had great success, he’s faced Durán a bunch. Mitchell’s just coming back from missing an entire year."

Though Murphy didn't identify anything about the interaction between Durán's stuff and Mitchell's or Bauers's skill sets that made the latter the better matchup, we can infer a little bit from the end of that quote. All that downtime Mitchell has had to withstand over the last two seasons means he's short on reps. Combining his big-league time and the Statcast-tracked portions of his rehab assignments, Mitchell has still only seen six pitches at 98 miles per hour or harder this season. One of the hardest things about returning from injuries is that it robs a player of rhythm and familiarity.

Bauers has seen 28 pitches at least 98 MPH this season. He doesn't do overwhelmingly well against them, but he was (in some sense) warmer to the task of facing Durán than Mitchell would have been, even coming off the bench. Then, there was what was going to happen next, whether Mitchell or Bauers got a hit or not.

"I knew I was gonna run for Hoskins if Hoskins got on, with Perkins, and then it’s an easy transition: Bauers goes to first, Perkins goes to center," Murphy said. "I thought he’d be our better chance there."

The skipper was admitting to a little bit of lock-in and irrationality, there, because as he acknowledged, Hoskins hadn't gotten on base. He still stuck to his plan to upgrade the defense, though, and part of that plan was inserting Bauers. Once Hoskins was retired, Murphy could have held fire on the pinch-hit maneuver, keeping his powder dry and making both the Perkins and the Bauers subs in the bottom half of the inning. Partly, he committed to a plan too soon. Partly, too, though, it's pretty clear that he wanted to get Bauers in there. He believed, in that moment, that Bauers gave them the better odds of taking a lead they could hold, even if the numbers suggested it was likely to be a wash.

Baseball is full of decisions like these. They can be fascinating to discuss, and the outcomes of them feel momentous, but ultimately, they were probably 52/48 or 54/46 calls--something close to coin flips. The most important part of the process isn't even making the decision: Bauers made an out and the Crew failed to score in the inning, but Mitchell was likely to make one, too, and the team went on to win the game.

No, the most important part is ensuring (whether by preaching teamwork and the relay-race mentality from Day One, as Murphy has done; or by collecting players who naturally think the way Mitchell does, as the front office has done; or by actively talking to players who might feel frustrated by a decision about what went into it, as might be required in other cases) that everyone stays bought-in and committed to the unifying purpose of the club. If a clubhouse has cohesiveness and a relentless collective attention to their work, the coaches are more free to make moves informed by tiny inputs like the number of pitches a player has seen that might prepare them for the matchup at hand, or like the defensive alignment they're seeking for the following inning. You can steal and stash away wins that way, and every such win is precious and valuable. So is that cohesiveness.