The Brewers will absolutely need Garrett Mitchell's breakout to continue in 2025

The Milwaukee Brewers drafted Garrett Mitchell out of UCLA envisioning a five-tool outfielder with power and speed roaming center field. Injuries have held Mitchell back from realizing that ceiling so far, but a healthy second half provided a lot of confidence in both the team and Mitchell that he's capable of what the Brewers initially envisioned.

From his late season debut in 2022, Mitchell tantalized Brewers fans with his ability to provide a spark on offense. The 2023 season was largely lost after a mid-April shoulder injury and then Mitchell missed the first three months of 2024. Finally, Mitchell returned to action on July 1st and while it took some time to find his footing, he was able to provide plenty of sparks, including a clutch go-ahead homer in Game 2 of the Wild Card series.

"I know I've put in a lot of work to get back here and be in this situation. But without my family, my friends, my teammates, that continued push to keep going, it makes you want to show up to the ballpark everyday and work your butt off." Mitchell said after Game 2.

Now, heading into 2025, the Brewers will need a full season of that continued push and more of those kinds of results from Garrett Mitchell.

Garrett Mitchell is the key to replacing the production lost with Willy Adames

Willy Adames is entering free agency and is unlikely to return to Milwaukee. The question for the Brewers front office now is how do they replace his production in the lineup. Joey Ortiz or Brice Turang could slide over to play shortstop sure, but are either of them going to hit 32 homers and drive in 112 RBIs? Probably not.

Could the Brewers bring in some other external addition to make up Adames' production? Maybe, but that's also unlikely given the history of how the Brewers front office operates. They're not likely to go out and pay Alex Bregman to come to town. If they want to go to the trade market, they'd have to give up some of their highly touted youngsters to get someone they know can hit 30 homers in the middle of the order.

In all likelihood, the Brewers are going to have to rely on internal improvements to replace the production lost by Adames. Christian Yelich will return from his back surgery and if he's back to the player he was in the first half of 2024, then that would be a major boost for the offense. However, the Brewers need someone beside Yelich to help buoy this lineup. Ortiz and Turang aren't sluggers, Sal Frelick is not going to suddenly develop a ton of power, so where will they find the new offense? It has to be Garrett Mitchell.

Mitchell is the only one of that group of young hitters that has the kind of power potential to help mitigate the loss of Adames offensively. He has the power to hit 20-30 homers a season, the issue previously has been tapping into that power but also the lack of healthy at-bats has hindered his development. Getting three solid months of everyday ABs has helped him.

"He's capable, you know, we've been waiting for this. He's very capable...he's showing signs of coming into his own." manager Pat Murphy said during the season of Mitchell's development.

Mitchell finished the 2024 season hitting .255/.342/.469 with eight homers and an .812 OPS in just 196 ABs. If you extrapolate that power output of eight homers over a typical 600 AB season from an everyday player, that means Mitchell was on pace for a 24-25 home run season. That's not even to mention how many stolen bases he could rack up, swiping 11 bags this year in limited time. His top end speed also makes him a threat on the bases.

Just as a comparison, Adames in 2024 had a .251/.331/.462 slash line. Even though it was three times as many at-bats, those are very similar average outputs between Adames and Mitchell.

If Mitchell continues to play like he did during the final three months of this year, they're going to be in great shape. Keep in mind, even though he debuted in 2022, Mitchell has just 324 ABs in the majors under his belt. Turang, who debuted in 2023, has nearly 1,000 ABs already.

Mitchell is going to continue to get better and the Brewers will need him to if they're going to three-peat as NL Central champions in 2025.