Garrett Mitchell's High-Fastball Problem Isn't Gone. It's Just Different Now.

Garrett Mitchell's biggest weakness is no secret. In his first three years in the big leagues, as scattered as those appearances were, he struggled badly against the high fastball. Prior to May 2026, Mitchell had only one month of baseball (April 2025) in which he recorded an expected batting average above .100 on high heaters, and he'd never recorded a monthly xBA above .135. There were occasional glimpses that he could foul off a high fastball, but the best pitchers in the game could go there repeatedly if they wanted to. Eventually, they knew, a swing and miss would come.

Mitchell's approach in the years prior to 2026 was to crush everything that wasn't a high fastball. He punished breaking balls in the strike zone, patiently waiting for pitchers to drop the ball down in the zone and attempting to do damage when they did.

After 2024, Mitchell spent time at Tread Baseball, working on flattening his swing to better handle pitches at the top of the zone. He knew that, eventually, pitchers wouldn't throw him anything else until he proved he could close that hole.

Unfortunately for Mitchell, he didn't have enough game time to develop and adapt those adjustments. A shoulder subluxation ruled him out early in 2025 and ultimately kept him out for the entire season. As much as he could work on the changes in a controlled environment, it's different in a game, where location, movement and the depth of a pitcher's arsenal combine to make the job much tougher. Mitchell even began to struggle with the breaking pitches that had been his bread and butter for so long.

Fast-forward to 2026, and a familiar pattern emerged. Mitchell was struggling again with the high fastball in April and May, and by May, pitchers were beginning to expose the weakness frequently. So Mitchell adjusted—in a big way. Some of those adjustments are still being worked on, as you'll see below, but Mitchell appears to be getting closer to his Goldilocks spot.

The Stance Change
The first, and perhaps easiest, change to see is Mitchell's setup. He's opened his stance significantly, while also shortening the gap between his feet compared with April and May. The degree of that change has varied throughout the season: he moved from roughly 32 inches between his feet in April and May, down to 28 inches in June, then 24 inches in June/July, before moving back to 28 inches in September.

Here's a swing from September on a pitch up and over the middle of the plate that Mitchell crushed:

Contrast that with Mitchell's setup in April. He looks more coiled and tense than he does in September and, although the camera angle isn't ideal, the closed stance is still obvious to the naked eye:

The change in stance brings a couple of advantages. An open setup can help a hitter clear the shoulders and hands more quickly, making it easier to get the bat on plane for pitches higher in the strike zone. Mitchell's shoulders and hips are more open, not just in his initial setup, but also when he gets his foot down. That creates a shorter path to the ball and is helping Mitchell get on time for high fastballs in a way he physically struggled to do in prior years.

Flatter Bat Path
I mentioned earlier that in the 2024-25 offseason, Mitchell was working on flattening his bat path to help him handle the high fastball. By taking less of an uppercut swing, Mitchell can get the barrel to the ball more directly, creating a more compact swing and reducing the likelihood of missing underneath the pitch.

His attack angle tells us a lot about his development in this area, and you can see a fairly dramatic shift in June, followed by another adjustment in July:

Mitchell's open stance and flatter path are allowing him to get on time against the fastball and square it up even when it's well-located. Although his swing-and-miss rate against high fastballs fell sharply in July, he's still whiffing fairly often in August and September. It's still a hole in his swing. But it's no longer an easy one for pitchers to exploit. Mitchell is now capable of doing enough damage against the high fastball to make pitchers think twice about repeatedly going there.

The changes in his quality of contact are now measurable, thanks to Statcast's developments this year. If we contrast 2024 Mitchell with April 2026 and September, his flatter bat path is having a clear impact on how consistently he's finding the barrel. Mitchell has almost always been "centered," meaning that he tends to get the barrel of the bat to the ball (rather than the end of it, or a narrower part nearer the handle), but the changes in how often he's perfectly on time and in line with the ball bear out the eye test. His swing is now capable of barreling up fastballs.

If we split his career results against high fastballs in the strike zone up to the end of this May and the time since, a startling turnaround in performance emerges:

That's allowed Mitchell to approach the plate differently from how he did during the earlier parts of the season. Pitchers are no longer able to pepper him at the top of the strike zone to the point of total predictability without a vicious response, Mitchell can take a more relaxed, all-encompassing approach to his hitting plan.

Pitchers now have to show him more than just a high fastball to get him out, and in doing so, Mitchell has been able to access the damage against breaking balls that eluded him earlier this season. Mitchell no longer has to go to the plate thinking primarily about protecting against the high fastball.

Earlier in the year, he was selling out for it, and his damage against breaking pitches suffered as a result. Now that he's comfortable covering the fastball at the top of the zone (or at least making pitchers think twice about getting predictable up there), he's able to take a more balanced approach. That's allowed him to get back to hammering breaking balls.

The sample sizes for the graphic above are small, but you can see Mitchell catching a lot of balls off the end of his bat in March and April, while also being early. That's a reflection of how much he was selling out for the high fastball and getting caught out in front. Now that he's more comfortable handling his Kryptonite, the timing and barreling of those breaking balls are coming back with a vengeance. Those are the balls you'll see Mitchell pull in the air that go a long, long way.

There is still a trade-off. While the flatter swing has been great for helping Mitchell time up fastballs, much of his contact (very hard contact, to be clear) has been on low line drives to the opposite field. If Mitchell is going to tap into his home-run power, it's more likely to come against breaking balls.

Now that he's settling into his groove, we're beginning to see that upside with more regularity in September as his expected slugging by month against each pitch group shows (remember the expected slugging against fastballs here covers the whole strike zone, not just high fastballs):

It's easy to forget just how little time Mitchell has had to iron out his mechanical kinks in the heat of battle. After losing almost the entirety of 2025, this year has given him the opportunity to make these adjustments, test them against major-league pitching and then adjust again. He's still figuring out exactly where his Goldilocks spot is. But for the first time, Mitchell has made pitchers pay for going to the place that used to be the obvious one to get him out.

Do you approve of the job the Brewers' front office is doing?

Do you approve of the job the Brewers' front office is doing?

• Do you approve of the job the Brewers' front office is doing? Required
  

  
• Save

See All Brewers Polls >