Garrett Wittels

From BR Bullpen

Garrett Nicholas Wittels

BR Minors page

Biographical Information[edit]

Infielder Garrett Wittels played in the St. Louis Cardinals organization in 2011 and 2012. Before that, he had made headlines while at Florida International University for posting the second-longest hitting streak in the history of college baseball, hitting safely in 56 consecutive games, only two fewer than the record streak achieved by Robin Ventura at Oklahoma State University in 1987. The streak started in February of 2010, lasted that entire season when his 100 hits were a school record, and then ended on February 18, 2011, on the first day of his junior season. He went on to hit .345 in 60 games that year, but was not selected in the 2011 amateur draft. The Cardinals signed him as an undrafted free agent on July 3, 2011.

He had been one of the famous college baseball athletes in the country during his streak, but things came crashing down during Christmas break at the end of 2010, when he went on a holiday at a resort in the Bahamas with four friends. There they met a pair of girls at the resort's bar, who later accused the group of sexual aggression, an accusation aggravated by the fact the girls were underage high school students from Texas (but had lied about this fact to the boys). There were two versions in the highly publicized case, with the boys claiming nothing untoward had happened. They were eventually vindicated by security camera footage that undermined the alleged victims' story, and the Bahamas Attorney General's dropped the case the following June, concluding it had been an attempt at extorsion, but not before Wittels' reputation had been badly damaged. While the five accused had been allowed to return to Florida while the investigation continued, Wittels' school initially wanted to suspend him before changing its mind. He played that season under a cloud, and as the rape case was still active on draft day, he was passed over (he would normally have been a 3rd round choice, absent any allegations of misconduct). Bahamanian authorities officially dropped the case on June 20th and Wittels signed a contract two weeks later.

Wittels spent his first season with the Batavia Muckdogs of the New York-Penn League, hitting .262/.308/.321 in 42 games while playing mainly 2B and 3B (he had been a shortstop in college). In 2012, he was with four different teams. He opened with the Quad Cities River Bandits of the Midwest League, hitting .208 in 25 games, then went back to Batavia when the NYPL season started in June and hit .254 in 47 games. He then played one game in AA with the Springfield Cardinals of the Texas League and 4 with the Memphis Redbirds of the Pacific Coast League. His overall batting line was .243/.297/.354 in 77 games. Not awful, but something had been irretrievably broken in the judicial ordeal he had had to go through and he retired before the start of the 2013 season.

Further Reading[edit]

  • Tom Dubberke: "Garrett Wittels' College Hitting Streak", Bleacher Report, May 26, 2010. [1]
  • Gus Garcia-Roberts: "Garrett Wittels: Keeping the Streak Alive", Miami New Times, November 25, 2010. [2]
  • Siobhan Morrissey: "Where have you gone, Garrett Wittels?", ESPN.com, May 20, 2012. [3]

Related Sites[edit]

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