The world is getting to know Garrett Mitchell. Or at least the casuals who are actually interested in watching the Milwaukee Brewers dominate the postseason.
Fantasy baseball bros knew the whole time, didn’t we? This is one of the fun parts about grinding out player previews every year and playing DFS. You know a guy has the potential, and eventually you see it.
Not that Mitchell has had a tremendous postseason. .207/.303/.483, but two massive homers as he was a big part of putting the Dodgers to rest.
I don’t even know what the point of this post is. I just wanted to give Mitchell an atta boy. It’s not like he was a league-winner in the regular season. But he finally stayed healthy, played 145 games, and hit .260 with 11 bombs and 14 steals.
There are always two concerns with him in the lead-up to draft season:
- Health (69 games in 2024, 25 in 2025 before the 145 this year)
- Platoon (career 91 wRC+ vs. LHP)
When he’s healthy, he’s often sitting against lefties. A high strikeout rate (30% vs. LHP, 33% vs. RHP) keeps the production spotty as well.
But the tools, man. The tools! 96th percentile EV, 98th percentile sprint speed. He’s a 6’2 " 230-pound dude with max EVs above 115, and he plays center field. There aren’t many guys with this skill set.
There’s a data report that puts together EV and Speed, he’s #2 on the list behind another sneaky name for next year - Henry Bolte.
I’ve had my Garrett Mitchell shares every year, and they’ve never worked out. They didn’t even really work out this year with the disappointing 11 HR, 14 SB season.
He didn’t hit a single homer in 25 games last year, so he’s stuck at just 11 for his last 170 games. But prior to 2025, he was almost a 4% HR% guy. That’s a mid-20s home run bat.
This year, he hit way too many ground balls for the power numbers to get there. A 56% GB%. Way too many balls pounded into the ground. His most common launch angle range was between -5 and 8. It’s not good.
Just a 33% Sweet Spot rate and a 11.7% Brl%.
There’s a lesson here that works against Mitchell’s stock for 2027. Average EV by itself can be misleading. Some guys hit the ball very hard, but either collect those EVs on ground balls, or just don’t get enough fly balls in the air for it to play.
Mitchell has the latter problem. He still hits his fly balls extremely hard. His 108 EV90 on fly balls was in the top 25 in the league. His bat speed’s in the 98th percentile. This isn’t an “efficient” EV guy, it’s all just raw bat speed. When the swing matches correctly with the path of the pitch, you get tankjobs like this one:
He hit a home run at 115.5mph back in May. It was hit at 20 degrees, one of the lower angles you can have for a homer. But that’s the kind of stuff you can do when you’re swinging the bat this hard.
The reason we’re talking about him today is the two homers he’s hit against the Dodgers; both of those came off lefties. Two very tough ones at that - Blake Snell and Tanner Scott.
I just wanted to say a shout-out to Garrett Mitchell. Maybe this will be the catalyst year. He avoided the IL, and he’s got the confidence building now as he’s had a couple of big swings on the biggest stage of his career.
DUDES FOR NEXT YEAR
HENRY BOLTE
We already saw the top of the board in EV+Speed. Henry Bolte has enormous upside. He’s one of the most tooled-out players in the league, and he has the advantage of a clean bill of health for his short career and a minor league park to hit in for one more year. After an adjustment period, he hit .307/.388/.488 with eight homers and nine steals in August and September. The K% is a problem there, too, as it is with a lot of hard-swingers. A 28% K% will cause some cold streaks. But he’s not a wild free-swinger at a 50% Swing% and 28% Chase%, and we saw huge improvements this year after the discipline stuff was horrible in the minor leagues prior.
He’s going to be a popular “breakout” pick. I don’t think he’ll sneak by too many guys, but he’s not going to go inside the top 40 picks - and he’s one of a small number of guys with that first-pick-production upside. I love buying into skills like this. The sky is the limit for Bolte.
KONNOR GRIFFIN
I’m trying to avoid talking about the obvious names. Jordan Walker and Bobby Witt Jr. are here. They’re first (or second-round) picks next year; no use in me telling you they’re really good.
And everybody knows Konnor Griffin. But I think he’ll slip into the 3rd or 4th round next year. The talent he showed in the MLB was as advertised. What might keep the price palatable is the fact that he played just half the year. A couple of different fluke injuries cost him time. That’s the good news. It wasn’t a recurrent hamstring or something like that that lingers. He broke an elbow (which would be scary for a pitcher, but he’s not a pitcher) and then tore a ligament in a finger. He got back in September and finished the year healthy.
He hit a ball at 113.2 miles per hour. He stole 23 bags in 80 games. A 32% attempt rate and 85% success rate.
The final boss will be launch angle stuff, as is often the case with young stud talents. Just a 37% Sweet Spot% last year and a 51% GB%. More than 80% of his batted balls failed to classify as fly balls. And that’s not a big deal, we like ground balls and line drives for speedy guys. But the FB% needs to come up 5-10 points (18% last year) to get him into the 30-homer discussion.
The best comp for Griffin, I think, is Bobby Witt Jr. Maybe Elly De La Cruz is in that discussion too, since Griffin’s height is closer to Elly’s. For all of the accolades on Witt, he’s hit just 23 and 18 homers the last two years. Not exactly a stud in the HR department. It took Elly until his fourth season to get his home run rate above 4% (4.7% this year for 30 homers). He strikes out a ton, and it took a lot of time and adjustment to find a consistent fly ball rate.
Griffin’s power might be overstated for 2027. PNC Park is a tough place to hit for righty power. And I don’t suspect they’re going to overhaul his swing to generate more fly balls. You’re probably at a 15-homer projection for next year. But a potential .280 batting average and 40+ steals will make him a first-round caliber player even if there are only that many homers.
And yeah, he’s 20 years old. There are some 40-40 seasons in the future, if that’s who he wants to be. And maybe he doesn’t want to be a 40-homer guy. That usually means there’s a trade-off with batting average and a lack of havoc caused on the basepaths. But I just can’t see a bad (healthy) season coming from a guy with this much physical talent who got the bigs this young.
That fact alone (getting to the bigs before turning 21) is a pretty great indicator of future success. Check out the list of guys who debuted before turning 21 in the last eight years:
- Rafael Devers
- Victor Robles
- Ronald Acuna Jr.
- Juan Soto
- Fernando Tatis Jr.
- Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
- Luis Garcia Jr.
- Wander Franco (whoopsy)
- Francisco Alvarez
- Junior Caminero
- Jasson Dominguez
- Jordan Walker
- Jackson Chourio
- Jackson Merrill
- Jackson Holliday (good time to be named Jackson)
- Bryce Eldridge
- Colt Emerson
- Konnor Griffin
- Ethan Salas
Some misses there, some guys who took some time, and some guys still working on it. Some teams are more willing to do this, that matters too. The Pirates haven’t been one of those organizations, but Griffin wouldn’t be denied as the Pirates had some faint playoff hope at the beginning of the season.
The list, overall, is a list of success stories. Some of the best current players in the game are on that list. There’s a good reason that somebody that young gets to the bigs so fast, and by itself, as I said, it’s a really good indicator of future studliness.
Maybe the hype on Griffin will push him into the second round, it could get out of control for redraft leagues to the point where he’s maybe not worth it. But the potential payoff is insane, and he’s gotta be in every top 10 list for dynasty leagues right now.
CAM SMITH
“This year’s Jordan Walker”. If somebody writes that article and doesn’t mention Cam Smith, they’re missing something. Unless they don’t, and then Smith sucks again; then I guess they’d be right.
Smith has hit .222/.294/.375 in his 291 MLB games so far. Not great. His OPS actually got worse in 2026 from what it was in 2025 (.671 → .669).
But don’t forget how long it took Jordan Walker to figure it out. Here are his yearly stats:
Baseball stats aren’t always sticky. There’s a lot of randomness in the game. But one thing that doesn’t fluctuate is physical tools for younger players who aren’t dealing with major injuries.
That’s what we have with Smith. He’s 24. He hit 21 homers and swiped 12 bags last year and got the K% down a little bit to 26%. There are still problems to fix. He hit 45% ground balls, didn’t walk much, and gave away too many plate appearances to strikeouts. He pulled the ball in the air just 15% of the time.
So there’s a hit tool that needs development. But I’d rather have a tooled-out dude with this sort of problem than a slow-swinging, slow-running guy who has the launch angle stuff to figure out.
I’ll be back in on Cam Smith. Few guys have his amount of talent, and we see it all the time that it just takes a guy a few years to put it all together.
Smith is also nominated for a Gold Glove this year. That doesn’t help you in fantasy leagues, but it’s a vote of confidence that he’ll be in there for defense when struggling at the plate, and it speaks even more to his athleticism.
SPENCER JONES
I just missed this stuff while he was coming up in the minors. I didn’t realize the speed the big man has! 90th percentile sprint speed, 10 steals in 86 games. He played at a 20-20 pace. He even hit for a non-awful .245 batting average.
This trend was nice:
After the all star break: .250/.306/.452, 34.5% K%, 7.3% BB%, .355 xwOBA
He needs to cut back on the strikeouts a bit. I’m not saying he has to be a 25% K% guy; we’ve seen it happen for stud athletes at a 28-30% K%. But mid-30s is too high.
The zone contact rate improved as the year went on. It still wasn’t good in the final two months (75%), but it got out of the horrifying range it was in prior.
He could benefit from the Yankees moving on from Giancarlo Stanton. Not that Stanton stays on the field for more than 30 games a year, anyway, but Jones coming into the year with an every day starting job should help his confidence and his ability to get consistent reps and start figuring some things out.
Shout out to Garrett Mitchell, and get ready to take whatever discounts you can get on these other stud athletes.
