When Fate and the Game Gave Garrett Mitchell a Rare Opportunity, He Didn't Miss

In his entire MLB career, before Wednesday night, Garrett Mitchell had only pulled two non-ground balls on pitches over the outer third of the plate or farther away. One was a lineout to right field this August, against Atlanta utilityman-turned-emergency pitcher Luke Williams, on a lobbed pitch that came in just over 60 miles per hour. The other was a soft line drive to first base, which turned into a double play. Mitchell doesn't turn on the outside pitch, and when he does, it certainly isn't with loft and authority.

This is not only true of Mitchell, but one of the most important truths about him as a player. Consistent power production has eluded the obviously strong and whippy Mitchell for much of his professional career, because he hits way too many ground balls. His power is over the outer third of the dish, especially against right-handed pitchers, but it tends to take the shape of hard-hit singles and doubles. Even as he finally stayed healthy enough to get prolonged big-league playing time this summer and managed 23 extra-base hits in 224 plate appearances, he had a 52% ground-ball rate.

Phil Maton of the Mets was a thoroughly excellent matchup for Mitchell, though. In his fractured MLB career, he's been better against curveballs than against any other pitch type against righties. Many lefty batters see big swing-and-miss differentials by pitch type, but Mitchell is one who swings through a scary percentage of the four-seam fastballs he sees, so his more typical whiff rates against breaking and offspeed offerings feel tame, by comparison. After the curveball, the pitch against which he does the most damage is the cutter. Maton is a cutter-curveball righty.

Mitchell had come on two innings earlier, as a pinch-runner for DH Gary Sánchez. He was batting for the first time in the game, but the matchup he got was one Pat Murphy had anticipated when he made the choice to lift Sánchez in favor of Mitchell. It was a chance at redemption, after Mitchell had been thrown out trying to steal in his pinch-running capacity, but it was also a familiar moment for the young hitter.

Back in spring training, I asked Mitchell about coming off the bench, because it was obvious even then that that would be part of the story of his season. After Jake Bauers hit for him in a late-game situation in Minnesota just after the All-Star break, I asked him about the feeling on both sides of the decision a manager makes to remove one hitter and bring in another. Even more than the occasion called for--far beyond platitudes--he affirmed his willingness to fill whatever role the team required. Since he arrived in the majors in 2022, Mitchell has understood that he'd sometimes need to find his playing time by coming on midstream to help the team gain a tacitcal edge. It didn't faze him not to start; he made it part of his mental and logistical routine to prepare to perform as a pinch-hitter or substitute.

In 27 career regular-season plate appearances as a sub--be it a pinch-hitter, a pinch-runner, or a defensive replacement who later came to bat--Mitchell has batted .391/.482/.652. He had three doubles off the bench this year alone. He has become a player the team can not only trust with this often-difficult role, but actively try to cast for it. His blend of plate discipline, ability to hit the ball hard, and speed have been calibrated just right, such that they give opposing pitchers and defenses something they can't quite handle in the back halves of games.

Thus, Mitchell was in a role he's embraced and had a pitching matchup that favored him. With Willy Adames representing the go-ahead run in the bottom of the eighth, Mitchell stepped in against Maton, needing to lock in on something and create more of that extra-base jolt he's delivered off the bench so often. On the first pitch, he got a get-me-over backdoor breaking ball, and he was perfectly ready for it.

Had Maton started him with the cutter, Mitchell would have been able to punch the ball to the left side. Though it was ultimately extremely uncharacteristic contact and direction on a ball in that location, the swing Mitchell put on the pitch was balanced and knowing. He had gone up there with confidence and anticipated Maton's plan. He didn't risk falling behind in the count, and he didn't foul off the mistake pitch he got.

Much of playoff baseball is that simple: When you get your pitch, don't miss it, even by a hair. Simple and easy are as different as a horse and a house, in this case, though. Mitchell had to be mentally, physically, and emotionally prepared--and still, the resulting moment was a combination of pitch location and batted ball that he'd never achieved before. Sometimes, playoff baseball also comes down to that: letting adrenaline flow just enough to do something that would ordinarily be on the fringe of your capacity, or beyond it.

Maybe Mitchell is destined to figure things out on a more sustainable basis, and this will be remembered as the concretizing, clarifying moment in his transition from an exciting complementary piece to a lineup fixture. Maybe it won't. In either case, though, Mitchell's talent, makeup, and situation--the circumstance his manager helped create, in which he was set up to succeed--came together on that pitch to create a core memory for Brewers playoff history. For that, a great deal of credit is due, and no worrying about whether he can repeat it in the future is required.