Why Does Garrett Mitchell Have A High Fastball Problem, And How Can He Address This In 2025?

Garrett Mitchell is one of the most exciting players to watch on a baseball field. His high octane approach with the sheer athleticism he possesses gives him the five tool potential, and to date his on field production has been impressive. In his first 365 plate appearances, Mitchell has accumulated almost 3 fWAR with a .264/.343/.463 slash line featuring 13 home runs for a WRC+ of 123. Combining that with some exceptional speed and reads in center field, and surely you have the makings of a franchise center fielder for the forthcoming years… right?

Well there is one nagging issue with Michell. Despite the surface level production, his underlying metrics aren’t quite so pure. Although it has decreased year on year, his strikeout rate for his career sits at 34.2% with a hefty dose of batted ball luck as evidenced by his BABIP and Weighted On Base Average (WOBA) compared to his expected WOBA.

The main reason for this is his struggles with the high four seam fastball. You’ll have heard many Brewers experts referencing it, including our own Jack Stern and Spencer Michaelis on the Brewer Fanatic Pod, and it’s something opposing teams haven’t attacked as harshly as you might expect just yet, but that’s likely to change next year.

Mitchell has one hit against a fastball in the upper third of the strike zone this year (ironically a home run against Hayden Birdsong) while attempting to use his keen eye at the plate to avoid chasing above the zone, to take high fastballs early in counts and on either a fastball lower down in the strike zone or a breaking pitch left in zone. He even swings through middle-middle meatballs with more regularity than most MLB players,

Both of these he can do damage against, but against those pitcher’s with the command to pound the top of the zone it will spell trouble. Mitchell, against right handed four seam fastballs last year, had a .906 OPS but based on the graphics below you can see some serious regression incoming:

While he managed to punish some pitches on the outer third of the zone that snuck out for home runs to the opposite field, the extreme whiff rates at the top of the zone and his poor quality of contact on meatballs and the inner third don’t bode well for the coming season.

Why, Technically, Does Mitchell Struggle Against The High Four Seam Fastball?
For that, let’s compare his swing to one of the best high fastball hitters in the game, and you can see a distinct difference that may explain both why Garrett Mitchell swings under so many rising four seamers while simultaneously barreling up a plethora of dipping curveballs.

Here’s Garrett Mitchell’s swing against a high Rhett Lowder four-seam fastball:

Mitchell swings underneath the ball, missing by quite a margin for an in zone pitch and it was emblematic of his struggles all season. 

If we slow it down however to this freeze frame, you can maybe spot the cause:

I've drawn some lines on here to emphasize, but Garrett Mitchell's wrists droop before the bat enters the hitting zone, as a method of creating more of an upward trajectory on his swing. If it were on plane with his arm angle, there's a high likelihood Mitchell at least makes contact with this ball, but because of the drop in his wrists, Mitchell is fighting a losing battle to reorient his bat to the upper third of the zone, creating a sizeable hole in his swing. 

He dips the wrists, then flicks them back in an effort to create more of an upward trajectory in his bat path, but by the time he makes this correction it's altogether too late to make contact with the ball.

Let's contrast that to Juan Soto. Against fastballs in the upper third of the zone, Soto recorded a monstrous 1.082 OPS. Most hitters struggle with this pitch, but Soto is one of the best in the game for a reason, and you'll see why in this video below:

Ryan Helsley won reliever of the year in 2024 and his fastball was a major part in this. This particular video features a four seamer at 101.5 mph in the upper third of the zone, nearly untouchable for most hitters, and yet Soto crushed a 114 mph double. How did he do this? Well let's look at his position in contrast to Mitchell's before entering the strike zone:

Soto's alignment from his shoulders, to his forearms, wrists and the bat are almost perfectly aligned. In doing so, timing up the high fastball becomes an infinitely more manageable task, and his bat will naturally flow through the path of the ball. It maximises the power output that Soto has and is a massive factor in his ability to barrel so many baseballs while maintaining such a low strikeout rate.

How Does Garrett Mitchell Address this in 2025?
Hitter's don't have time to decide how to swing at a pitch after recognising the pitch. They have to adjust mid swing after recognising a pitch, and the wrists a re a massive part in that adjustment. Altering your wrist angles is a big component of this in altering the angle of the bat to cover as much of the strike zone as possible once a pitch is recognised and the hitter tries to adjust for the movement profile of whatever variation is thrown.

The problem with Mitchell compared to most hitters is his breaks his wrists as a default movement rather tan an adjustment to the pitch, and it gives him a head start covering those dipping curveballs but it becomes so much more difficult to fight and bring the bat plan back up again from that position.

Mitchell could look to create a more aligned wrist position with the rest of his swing, but that could be iffy on the results front and leave him prone to those breaking pitches. As the Brewers have seen with Keston Hiura and Joey Wiemer, dramatically changing someone's swing is no quick fix and can create more problems than it solves. Hitter's have developed coping mechanisms to mitigate their weaknesses as they currently stand, and changing the swing invalidates all of those mechanisms while also creating new holes that the hitter has no cover against.

I do think in an ideal world, I would still like to see a flatter swing path from Mitchell, and have him use his natural timing and athleticism to adjust to those breaking pitches off the back of it. He has so many tools, and such an athletic swing that he could definitely make the most out of it. With the raw power he possesses and his eye at the plate, being able to time up the fastball more regularly while spitting on breakers is a path to success amongst many major leaguers historically.

There is also the general experience route and learning to work around his swing at the highest level. September was a poor month for Mitchell, but in August he managed to increase his foul ball rate, lower his whiff rate and make better production against high fastballs. Pitcher's were throwing them at a far higher rate, and Mitchell adjusted by selling out for them and gambling on the pitch rising from it's original position. 

Despite debuting in 2022, Mitchell has barely 2/3 of a full year's plate appearances under his belt. For a player with his raw athleticism, it's fair to say that he's still adjusting to the level with 365 plate appearances compared to the likes of Sal Frelick or Brice Turang 747 and 1067 plate appearances respectively. In doing so, although Mitchell arrived in the majors earlier than both, we should probably give him time to make his own adjustments within his swing to better cover that high four seam fastball naturally with experience.

One other thing to note that befits the explanation of his development at the major league level. Bat speed is a very intriguing statistic as changes within it can relate to a host of different explanations from pitch locations, injuries, confidence levels and more. That being said, From July through to September Mitchell's bat speed increased each month by a notable amount to the point that his September bat speed would have put him in the top 5 league wide if extrapolated over a full year.

In particular, note that his bat speed was increasing each month on fastballs. He did show improved performance in August in terms of whiffing less on high four seamers, and regressed back in September, but there could be a correlation between increased bat speed and his ability to adjust his wrist angles. It's tough to guess based on the small sample size of a month by month basis, but this is a promising indicator of his continuing development as a major leaguer.

Would you look to change Mitchell's swing path and wrist angles? Or would you gamble on his learning at the big league level helping him cover the pitch more effectively through experience? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!