LOS ANGELES -- The sight of former first-round Draft pick Garrett Mitchell in the Brewers’ dugout for Game 3 of the National League Championship Series was welcome for everybody, because there was a time not so long ago, in the early stages from his latest season-altering injury, that it’s the last place he would want to be.
“Especially when it first happened, I was like, ‘I don’t even want to be near a baseball field right now,’” Mitchell said. “‘I have a bone to pick with baseball right now.’”
You can’t blame him, since a series of fluke injuries prevented the five-tool Southern Californian from fulfilling the promise he showed while logging an .832 OPS after a late-season callup to the Majors in 2022. Mitchell had surgery this past July for a bony Bankart lesion, essentially a fracture of his left shoulder socket, along with a repair of the labrum he’d previously had repaired in ‘23. Both times, the injury was the result of a dislocated shoulder from diving headfirst into a base.
For those unacquainted with a bony Bankart lesion, Mitchell explained in layman’s terms.
“I cracked a third of the bone off my shoulder,” he said.
It was the latest of so many setbacks for Mitchell, a Type 1 diabetic who successfully managed the condition to become a star at UCLA and the 20th overall pick in the 2020 MLB Draft. In ‘21, Mitchell was sidelined nearly two months by a left knee injury. In ‘22, it was an oblique issue. In ‘23, Mitchell played 16 games for the Brewers before injuring his left shoulder in Seattle, and while he was able 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.
The second half of 2024, however, provided Mitchell’s first opportunity to show the kind of big leaguer he could be when healthy. He had an .812 OPS in 69 games over the final three months of the regular season, then hit a go-ahead two-run homer in the eighth inning of the Brewers’ 5-3 win over the Mets in Game 2 of the National League Wild Card Series, putting Mitchell alongside Paul Molitor as the only players in franchise history to hit a go-ahead homer in the eighth inning or later of a postseason game.
But this season, the injury bug bit again. Mitchell was Milwaukee’s Opening Day center fielder, but he suffered a left oblique strain on April 25 in St. Louis and landed back on the IL the next day. He began a rehab assignment in the Rookie-level Arizona Complex League on June 14 and was playing his third Triple-A game when he reinjured his shoulder during a three-hit game.
“It’s not falling out of love with the game, it’s just frustration,” Mitchell said. “You do everything you need to do to prepare yourself, and it’s constantly an uphill climb, and then you get to the top and get knocked down again. … When I look at the story being written, I think we’re still in the early chapters of that book. It’s not about my ability to play the game of baseball, this is trying to avoid [injuries]. I’m going to keep working and see where it goes.”
Mitchell was actually in Milwaukee for more than a month over the summer but was rarely seen by some of his teammates because he would arrive early to do his work, then get out of the way as players began to arrive.
Did he watch much of the Brewers’ franchise-record-setting season, or was that too depressing?
“Both,” Mitchell said. “I was keeping up with scores, I was watching periodically, but I wasn’t head-down, watching every day. That part was too hard, and I wasn’t down on myself about that.”
Mitchell has not yet resumed baseball activities, but he expects to get that clearance from the doctors in the coming weeks. He expects a relatively normal ramp-up to being a full participant by the start of Spring Training.
In recent weeks, Mitchell said, it seems his recovery has begun an upward curve, though he still feels sore when he wakes up every morning. He has been doing his rehab work at home in north Texas and was happy to take a diversion to Dodger Stadium to meet with the Brewers.
“I’m happy to be around the boys,” Mitchell said. “It’s a good change of pace.”