Garrett Mitchell Continues Stretching Hitting to Extremes

It feels like we've waited half a decade for a long look at Garrett Mitchell, and while 40-some games might not qualify as 'long' in baseball, it’s already the second-most games he has ever appeared in within a single season. 

This season, we hoped to nail down who Garrett Mitchell is, but to this point, putting him in a box has proved exceedingly difficult. So far, I would simply put Mitchell in a box labeled “Extreme!” Here’s where he ranks in some key metrics among qualified hitters, starting with the positives. For this, we'll utilize Statcast's method for percentiles, meaning you always want your hitter to be as close to the 100th percentile as possible, whether the stat itself is something good (like walk rate) or bad (like strikeout rate):

• BB%: 90th percentile
• Hard Hit%: 92nd percentile
• Barrel%: 84th percentile
• Outfield range: 78th percentile
• Arm Strength: 96th percentile
• Baserunning value: 90th percentile

And the negatives:

• GB/FB ratio: 3rd percentile
• Whiff%: 2nd percentile
• K%: 1st percentile
• Squared-Up%: 5th percentile
• Arm Value: 2nd percentile

To boil this all down, Mitchell hits the ball hard, but it’s very likely to be a ground ball. He swings and misses a lot, but barrels the ball when he hits it. He shows exceptional range and arm strength in the outfield but--this year at least--he has lost a ton of value on his throws. And finally, he’s extremely fast and valuable on the bases.

There’s a lot to unpack in all of this data. The first thing that pops out for me is Mitchell’s strikeouts. The history of hitters playing a full season with a strikeout rate over 35% is a short one, and Mitchell’s currently sits at 37%. Using 500 plate appearances as the minimum to rid us of a shortened 2020, a rate of 35% or higher has happened just six times in the history of the game. The responsible parties are Joey Gallo (twice), Chris Davis (twice), Chris Carter, and Mark Reynolds.

Now, one of these seasons was just about the worst in league history, in which Davis posted a .292 SLG and -2.5 fWAR in 2018. The others, however, range from slightly below-average by wRC+ to quite good. This makes sense, of course. If you have a player with a 35%+ strikeout rate who is also NOT hitting, you aren’t letting him reach 500 trips to the plate—unless you’re paying him like the Orioles were Chris Davis.

So, it is possible to strike out as much as Mitchell has and still be an above-average hitter, it’s just extremely unlikely. Of these six seasons, just three resulted in wRC+ figures over 100: Carter in 2013, and Gallo in 2017 and 2018. To make this work, these hitters sold out for home runs. The highest grounder-to-fly ball ratio from any of these three seasons was 0.66. Mitchell’s is 1.95, the fourth-highest in the league this year.  

Of course, Mitchell is less than halfway to 500 plate appearances. It seems fairly likely that his strikeout rate will drop somewhat as the season goes on, purely because we’re dealing with small samples. It’s the same reason I had to remove 2020 from our pool of K% leaders. In a year when players didn’t even need 200 PAs to qualify, four hitters posted a strikeout rate over 35%, and two were above 40%. This small sample warning applies to every stat we'll discuss here.

The second thing that pops out is Mitchell’s tremendously high BABIP, and the low batting average that comes with it. Currently, Mitchell ranks 4th in the Majors in BABIP (.395), but is hitting just .236. From a sustainability perspective, Mitchell has an excellent player profile for a high BABIP, with extremely hard-hit balls on the ground to complement blazing speed. Still, no one maintains a nearly .400 BABIP for their career. While Mitchell does have a career .380 BABIP, he currently has 610 career PAs, fewer than some players will have in 2026 alone. In the longest season of Mitchell's career so far, 2024, Mitchell posted a 124 wRC+ despite an even more extreme 2.48 GB/FB rate.

It's very difficult to find another ground ball-hitting speedster who strikes out anywhere near as much as Mitchell. The only player with as few homers as Mitchell (3) and a strikeout rate north of 28% in 2026 is Trevor Story, who is struggling this year and owns a .547 OPS. 

But Mitchell hasn't always lacked pop; he has 16 career homers in those 610 career PAs. Thus, the closest thing to a comp for Mitchell that I can find is Pirates center fielder and physical phenom Oneil Cruz. The pair are currently the top two qualified hitters in strikeout rate; they both hit a lot of ground balls (though Mitchell still hits more); and their wRC+ marks are within a few points of each other.

The key differences here are that Cruz hits the ball even harder, but chases pitches a lot more and walks a lot less. Cruz is also grading out poorly in range defensively this year, as the former shortstop continues his defensive odyssey. Here are Mitchell and Cruz offensively side by side, with Chase% and BB% (where Mitchell has a huge edge) removed to highlight their similarities:

The good news is, as far as comps go, Cruz is a solid name to be associated with. He has a career 102 wRC+, and Mitchell has considerably better instincts in the outfield. Cruz has hit the ball better than Mitchell this year, leading to a large gap in xSLG, but the on-field results have been quite similar.

Ultimately, Mitchell’s career wRC+ is currently 113. To me, that feels high for projecting him moving forward, but he truly does not have to be an above-average hitter to succeed in this league, as long as he’s healthy and his center field defense returns to solidly above average. One thing is certain: if Mitchell does stick as a long-term player, he'll do it with one of the most extreme offensive profiles in Brewers history.

Statistics courtesy of Statcast & FanGraphs