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Baseball Prospectus’s PECOTA projections have been out for several weeks. Among the most notable Brewers forecasts is the one for Garrett Mitchell.
The former first-rounder has started his big-league career by slashing a solid .278/.343/.452 (119 wRC+), albeit in just 141 plate appearances. PECOTA’s expectations are bearish: a .207/.284/.333 and 72 DRC+ (Deserved Runs Created Plus, BP's all-encompassing offensive measurement, which is scaled to 100 and in which higher is better).
It’s easy to be disdainful of that forecast. Mitchell has produced above-average offense at every stop of his professional career, so how did the model come up with such ugly numbers?
The answer is that PECOTA doesn’t care about Mitchell’s box score results. Whereas stats like OPS and wRC+ are derived from plate appearance outcomes, Baseball Prospectus’s line of projections and metrics strips things back to what a hitter shows on a per-pitch basis. That’s where things get hairy for Mitchell.
No one is questioning Mitchell’s athleticism. His average sprint speed of nearly 30 feet per second makes him one of the fastest runners in baseball. He’s an excellent defensive center fielder, with ample strength in his 6-foot-3 frame.
Mitchell’s process at the plate has also looked promising. He’s made mostly wise swing decisions as a big leaguer, posting a lower-than-average chase rate and an average swing rate on pitches in the zone. As someone who can make hard contact, Mitchell has attacked inside pitches most aggressively in a justified effort to pull the ball.
What causes concern is Mitchell’s swing path. Scouts have long worried that it leaves him vulnerable to velocity up in the strike zone and prevents him from elevating the ball on contact.
Mitchell has done little to ease those doubts. Buried beneath his solid slash lines are high strikeout and ground ball rates. Mitchell punched out at a 25.5% clip in his minor-league career, while hitting 61.8% of his batted balls on the ground.
His big-league showing has been even more alarming on a per-swing basis, creating more red flags for a projection system like PECOTA.
Mitchell has whiffed on 33.5% of his swings against fastballs. Most of those whiffs come on elevated heaters, where Mitchell’s contact rate drops significantly. Notice the shift once he sees a fastball above the belt.
It’s not hard to find productive hitters with high strikeout rates in the modern game, but not all strikeout-heavy bats are equal. Driving the ball and doing damage is a common overarching goal at the plate. For some, strikeouts are an accepted side effect of such an approach. For others, the swing-and-miss reaches an unintentionally extreme level and prevents them from doing damage.
Mitchell falls into the latter camp. While his whiff rates have been high across all pitch groups, his inability to make contact with fastballs is especially troublesome for his outlook. Only one qualified hitter (MJ Melendez) whiffed on fastballs in 2023 as frequently as Mitchell has in the majors.
Mitchell has looked better on the quality of contact front since reaching the majors, posting a 40.5% ground-ball rate and 28.7% line-drive rate. Statcast says he’s found the “sweet spot” of the bat (producing launch angles between 8 and 32 degrees) on 40.5% of batted balls.
Still, that’s not enough to sustainably compensate for Mitchell’s lack of consistent contact. He’s been incredibly fortunate on balls in play, enjoying a .441 BABIP and .537 wOBA on contact. Even hitters with a world-class ability to “guide the ball” (think Luis Arráez) cannot maintain such a success rate on batted balls, let alone one like Mitchell, who has not demonstrated plus bat control.
Based on his quantity and quality of contact, Statcast assigned Mitchell an expected .207/.279/.342 line and .276 xwOBA for his big-league work to date. Baseball Prospectus thinks he deserved a .197/.277/.326 slash and 64 DRC+. His 2024 projection is similar.
Without improvements to his swing, Mitchell is at risk of ceding playing time in a Brewers outfield filled with young talent. Given that depth, Mitchell’s full set of minor-league options, and his need for more development, there isn’t much pressure to roster him. While a demotion back to Triple-A might surprise some fans, it could be a plausible possibility in the near future.
Research assistance provided by TruMedia.
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