Is Garrett Mitchell Making Progress in His Wrestling Match with the High Fastball?

We've been here before. Garrett Mitchell may be one of the most polarizing players in the Brewers organization, combining tantalizing upside with glaring weaknesses. He's the type of player capable of dominating a playoff series matchup, or draining offensive momentum. We saw the Pirates destroy him with high fastballs a few weeks ago, and the results haven't been pretty overall. 

Including yesterday's home run, Mitchell has hit .281/.284/.303 over the last 30 days, with a 35,2% strikeout rate. Combined with Mitchell scuffling in the outfield (-5 Defensive Runs Saved (DRS), according to Sports Info Solutions) while trying to be careful to avoid diving on his weak shoulder, there has been a justifiably loud murmuring about whether Mitchell is fit to be an almost everyday player in the major leagues.

Despite that, there has been some data to suggest that Mitchell has been improving, without the results to show for it. If we look at his rolling swing and miss rate on pitches inside the strike zone, there's some clear progress being made:

We can see a steady trendline in the above graph, culminating in Mitchell (over his last 60 in-zone swings) being in the 50th percentile in MLB for contact rate. At points in the season, Mitchell's in-zone contact rate dropped below 60%, so to see it now approaching 85% marks an extreme transformation.

Why hasn't this translated to results? Well, the problem is two-fold. Mitchell's strikeout rate has always garnered a lot of attention, but his ground ball rate has historically been a cause for concern, as well. He had a 55.8% ground ball rate in 2024, dropped to 46.5% in 2025, and is currently at 51.5% this year.

No matter how hard you hit the ball, if you're hitting the majority of balls on the ground or low line drives, you will be susceptible to bad luck and rely on finding holes. Those holes are bigger if you hit a ball 115 MPH, but major-league infields are so good that you need to find the outfield grass to be consistent in this game. It should come as no surprise, then, that Mitchell's sweet-spot rate (the rate at which he finds ideal launch angles on his batted balls) almost perfectly mirrors his overall production:

Mitchell got off to a rip-roaring start, before finding himself in a funk as he tried to cut down on the swing-and-miss. He was late on a lot of balls and pounding them into the ground, before recently making some better contact and seeing some extra bases as a result. 

There's one other problem. Mitchell is still striking out an awful lot despite the reduced whiff rate, with his 40-plate appearance rolling average sitting exactly on his season average of 37%:

So, how has the zone contact improved to this extent and his chase rates also improved, but his actual strikeouts haven't changed? There are a couple of ways. Perhaps Mitchell is just not swinging as much? Or perhaps he's lasting longer in at-bats, fouling off pitches before eventually whiffing? Let's take a look!

Up to April 19, Mitchell had swung at 25 high fastballs. He fouled off 13 of those pitches and whiffed on the other 12. In a two-strike count, you could force Mitchell into a swing, and he wasn't doing any damage in those locations. The ball wasn't even being put in play. 

Over the last month, he's swung at a lot more fastballs, and been targeted more heavily, but the whiff hasn't been as bad as we thought:

Out of 91 high four-seam fastballs, Mitchell has swung and missed on just 20 of them, good for a 21.9% whiff rate. Initially, these resulted in more foul balls, and, when he did put the ball in play (note the numbers below the EVs are not balls in play, just the pitches located to that section), he's been hitting rockets:

The problem is, while Mitchell has been getting his bat to the high fastball more often, he's being forced to do so more often. Pitchers (especially righties, working up and away) have worked him there more frequently. Mitchell hasn't whiffed in the last month on a lefty's four-seam fastball, but right-handers have found it easier to pound that spot. On top of that, Mitchell appears to have been so dialed into the high fastball that he's struggled against his bread-and-butter breaking pitches, with skyrocketing ground ball rates and high whiff rates against changeups and sliders.

There's an implied question to parse here. Is Mitchell getting a hold of the high fastball only because he's expecting it on each and every pitch? Or can he find a balance where he can handle breaking pitches and off-speed offerings, while still managing the fastball? 

Hitting at the highest level of the sport is a chess match, and Mitchell showing off on Sunday with his home run against Bailey Ober is one way to place doubt in a pitcher's mind. If he can continue to progress against the high fastball and force pitchers into a more nuanced approach, that bodes well for him, but to avoid the streaky results, he will need to be capable of more than just selling out for one particular offering at a time. After all, everyone else in the league throws harder than Ober, which makes it easier for them to put Mitchell in the rocking chair.

The initial signs are good. He's making more contact than ever, and he's not doing it by just stopping himself from swinging. There are more foul balls, and he'll need to turn those into actual balls in play more often, but the trend lines are pointing upward across the last month, and a little confidence can go a long way. If he can find that adjustability to cover more than just one offering at a time, the second half of 2026 could be a very fun time for Mitchell.