The Milwaukee Brewers will be without one of their most dynamic players to start the regular season. Center fielder Garrett Mitchell has a fracture in his left hand and will open the season on the injured list, manager Pat Murphy announced Monday (per the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel). Mitchell suffered the injury when he was jammed on a swing over the weekend.
Mitchell, the No. 20 pick in the 2020 draft, is a career .278/.343/.452 hitter with five home runs and nine stolen bases over 47 big league games. Shoulder surgery limited Mitchell to only 19 games last season — 16 before surgery and three after — and now the hand injury will sideline him to open the 2024 season. He’ll see a specialist to determine a timetable for his return.
The Brewers are loaded with outfielders, so much so that Sal Frelick was expected to spend at least some time at third base this year. Mitchell’s injury figures to push Frelick back into the outfield full-time with Joey Ortiz, who came over in the Corbin Burnes trade, taking over at third base. Murphy’s regular lineup could look like this:
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CF Sal Frelick
C William Contreras
LF Christian Yelich
1B Rhys Hoskins
SS Willy Adames
DH Gary Sánchez
RF Jackson Chourio
2B Brice Turang
3B Joey Ortiz
Frelick played plenty of right field last year and Chourio came up through the minors as a center fielder, though Chourio has played right field primarily in the final days of spring training, and is likely to begin the season there. Either way, with Frelick or Chourio, the Brewers will have a strong defender in center. Joey Wiemer, another strong defender, is ticketed for Triple-A.
