LOS ANGELES -- The last time the Brewers played postseason games at Dodger Stadium, Garrett Mitchell felt like an outsider. It was Games 3 and 4 of last year’s NLCS, and Mitchell flew into L.A. from Texas, where he’d been recovering from the latest of the major injuries that were detouring his career.
They were not particularly pleasant days for the Brewers, who were about to get swept by the Dodgers.
And they were not particularly pleasant for Mitchell, who hopes this NLCS visit brings a much different outcome.
“Was it a hard day?” Mitchell said last week when asked to reflect. “I mean, yeah, not being able to be out there and help your team and compete is mentally challenging. But at [the same] time, too, it's about the team and doing whatever it takes to win. Being able to be on both sides of that -- being able to play in the postseason in '24, being able to be there last year, even though it didn't go the way we wanted it to, all of that holds value. All of that's important because you're constantly watching, listening, seeing what's going on. You learn. You can learn on the field, but you can also learn just watching the game and watching how things are going.
“For me, I take it as all learning lessons regardless of playing or not playing.”
This time, he will be playing. That is a blessing for Mitchell, who navigated the challenges presented by Type 1 diabetes to become a first-round Draft pick in 2020 and a big leaguer two years later, only to run into fluke injuries.
In ‘21 as a Brewers prospect, Mitchell was sidelined nearly two months by a left knee injury. In ‘22, it was an oblique issue. In ‘23, he played 16 games for the Brewers before separating his left shoulder on a dive into third base against the Mariners, and while he was able to return to play three more games at the end of the regular season, he was left off the postseason roster.
In ‘24, he fractured his left index finger during the final week of Spring Training and didn’t debut until July 1. And in ‘25, he reinjured his left shoulder on another dive into a base. It required surgery for a bony Bankart lesion, essentially a fracture of his left shoulder socket, along with a second repair of the labrum.
As he rehabbed throughout the late summer, Mitchell was mentally spent.
And the Brewers didn’t blame him. His career was not going the way it was supposed to.
“Nobody could have predicted this,” Brewers manager Pat Murphy said.
By that, the manager meant a healthy, full season for a player who has proven dynamic when he’s on the field. And that’s what Mitchell delivered in 2026, playing in 145 games -- four more, in a single season, than he had in his first four seasons combined.
“He’s been phenomenal,” Murphy said. “When you’re looking at our team, maybe the reason we didn’t get predicted early on to be as successful in the regular season was because of the unknown about Mitchell. He had been injured for four years, basically, and to see him come out and perform and have his best season and play 140-plus games, and he’s just done it very consistently.
“He’s scratching the surface. The kid has done very, very well and given us a huge lift this year.”
Mitchell didn’t just play, he performed. He logged a 3.4 bWAR. His .354 on-base percentage was fourth best among Brewers hitters with at least 100 plate appearances. His 116 weighted runs created plus, a good measure of overall offensive value, was sixth on the team.
And he’s emerged from a quiet start to this postseason as a catalyst for the Brewers. After going 2-for-11 with six strikeouts in Games 1-3 of the NLDS against the Padres, Mitchell went 2-for-4 in Game 4. He drove in the game’s first run, scored the go-ahead run and sealed the victory with a dramatic catch at the center-field wall to take away a potential tying home run from Manny Machado.
Then, amid a tough left-on-left matchup against Tarik Skubal in Game 1 of the NLCS on Sunday night, Mitchell coaxed a five-pitch walk to start the fifth inning, advanced on Cooper Pratt’s sacrifice bunt and scored on Luis Lara’s tiebreaking single for the winning run in a 2-1 victory.
“He’s had some unfortunate luck with his health, but the fact that he’s been able to go out there every day has been tremendous,” said Brewers president of baseball operations Matt Arnold. “Great kid who works his tail off and has run into some bad luck over the course of his career. And to see him finally be able to put it together the way he has this year, and play regularly, has been fantastic.”
Mitchell would love to play at least six more games in 2026. That’s how many victories the Brewers require to win the World Series.
“I’m not really worried about more of the past, I'm more worried about the present,” he said. “I'm here now and competing.”