Brewers outfielder Garrett Mitchell manages his diabetes on baseball’s biggest stage

ST. PETERSBURG, FL – Garrett Mitchell jogged off Tropicana Field after practicing catching fly balls ricocheting off the roof, and ran to the dugout to grab a electrolyte drink before heading back out for batting practice on Sunday night, the day before Game 3 of the World Series.

Mitchell, the Milwaukee Brewers center fielder, has Type 1 diabetes and he’s very aware of how to manage his health – even with the extra challenges in the biggest professional moments of his life: elevated stress, long-running and later games, late workout hours and interrupted routines.

“It starts with hydrating well, eating well, getting good quality sleep,” Mitchell said. “Those are the most important things.”

The week off between the NL Championship Series and the World Series was helpful, to a point, because Mitchell could catch up on a bit of rest. But he still has to make sure he takes care of himself every day, all the time.

Mitchell already had a big fan following, being from Orange, California, and being married to a well-known softball player, but he has become a big-time fan favorite within the Brewers fan base this year, too. After putting baseball injuries behind him, he’s made stunning wall-climbing grabs in the outfield and played his role perfectly on defense between Jackson Chourio to his right and Sal Frelick to his left.

More: Brewers’ Garrett Mitchell talks baseball with his softball-star wife | Lori Nickel

There also are fans who have diabetes, or who are raising money for better treatments and hopefully a cure, who follow Mitchell as well. He already is approachable but he's also open to talking about diabetes with others.

“The community of diabetics is small – it’s still a lot of people,” Mitchell said. “I don’t know what the number is now; when I was younger it was like 16 million. I imagine that number has grown more − but that’s what I knew as a kid.

“I definitely know how special [the community] is.

“Getting the opportunity to talk to people who have it – young children, adults – I’m not thinking about Garrett the baseball player, I’m thinking about Garrett the Type 1 diabetic. So whenever I get an opportunity to have those conversations, or share a little bit of wisdom, or the things that I’ve had to go through, good and bad, and all the challenges, that’s my bread and butter. That’s what I enjoy doing. Being able to share that.”

It's not that common for pro athletes to have diabetes, and it was a bit of a discussion early in Mitchell's career with the Brewers.

“It was certainly something we felt like we had to get a handle on and understand how Garrett manages it,” then-Brewers president of baseball operations David Stearns said in a 2022 Journal Sentinel story, “what limitations if any it would put on him throughout a pro career because a pro career requires a lot more than what you’re doing in high school and college.”

But the Brewers quickly realized Mitchell was good at managing his health.

“We became comfortable with his ability to manage it,” Stearns told the Journal Sentinel, “and we also knew that this was one of the reasons why we had the ability to take him where we did – because there was this unusual aspect about his health and there’s just not been a lot of position players at the big-league level who have played with it.”