Less Than an MVP, but More Than an All-Star: Christian Yelich's Gorgeous Renaissance

[Matthew Trueblood]

There are 13 MLB teams who have never signed a player to a $200-million contract. The Chicago Cubs have never gone there. Neither have the St. Louis Cardinals. The Brewers have, though, and the man on whom the smallest-market team in baseball took a leap of faith is repaying that in a beautiful way this season.

Image courtesy of © Benny Sieu-USA TODAY Sports

Maybe the best way to capture Christian Yelich's relentless and voluminous contributions to the 2024 Brewers is this: If you sort all players with at least 100 plate appearances this year by the percentage of their games played in which their total bases and walks drawn added up to four or more, Yelich ranks 17th of 365. That stat--I've dubbed it Big Game%, because meeting that threshold nearly always means you've had one and because performing so well is big for your team, alleviating pressure on teammates--nicely captures the way a hitter with power, the willingness to work a walk, and the ability to hit for average can impact a game more profoundly than one with a more limited skill set.

That's not to denigrate singles and walks guys. Yelich has clawed his way back from a career crisis point three years ago, through a long stretch during which he was a light-hitting move-the-line type, and that player has value. Avoiding outs is still the most valuable atomic skill in baseball, because it lengthens the game and buys both yourself and your teammates an extra chance, an extra opportunity to score late if needed. Ultimately, though, it's the guys who can come up with multiple base hits in a game and/or hit for extra bases in a single shot that change the game. For a while, after his semi-tragic 2019 knee injury, that wasn't Yelich.

Now, it is again.

Yelich isn't the kind of offensive gamebreaker that Aaron Judge, a healthy Mike Trout, Kyle Tucker, Shohei Ohtani, or Gunnar Henderson are, but he's right there in the group just below that, and far clear of the larger cluster of hitters (including virtually all of his own teammates) who are roughly average--not just based on overall production, but in their ability to alter a specific contest.

How is he doing it? Firstly, yes, Yelich is lifting the ball a bit more often than in the last few years. When pitchers elevate it at all, he elevates, too, rather than getting on top of it and hitting very hard but harmless ground balls with negative launch angles.

His average launch angle is up, but only very slightly. He's not hitting the ball significantly harder, on average. The really important thing is that, yes, he's pulling the ball. A lot. Yelich's pull rate has gone through the roof, with 49% of his batted balls going that direction this season. At least as vitally, when he does pull it, it's not on the ground (or at least not right into the ground) nearly as often. These aren't rollovers. He's staying behind, beneath and through the ball at contact, but catching it farther out in front, with tremendous results.

To get the bat head out on the ball and pull it so much more (at a healthy launch angle, no less), Yelich is getting more aggressive. He's swinging more often than he ever has before in the big leagues, although it's still just over 46% of the time. He's also making contact at his highest rate ever, within a tenth of a percentage point. The combination of those approach changes has led to the best strikeout rate of his career and a still-excellent 11.0% walk rate.

There's probably something that has to be called good luck in Yelich's set of batted-ball outcomes, but he's always been a sensationally gifted hitter. At his best, he was a guy who could hit 40-plus homers, because of his exceptional combination of bat speed and feel for the barrel. He's not back at that level, and he never will be, but there was a rebirth last year that made him a solid complementary contributor. This season, the reborn Yelich has transmogrified, as though (after moving through his larval stage for a second time in his career last season) he's now emerging and spreading butterfly wings for the second time. He won't rival Judge or Henderson again, but he's become a slugger who doesn't strike out; a patient hitter who doesn't miss mistakes; and a speedster who never gets caught on the bases.

It was such a frightening moment for the Brewers franchise when Yelich looked so diminished, in the season or two after his broken kneecap. They couldn't afford to be wrong on an investment as large as the one they'd already made in him. Happily, since then, he's proved that they never were wrong. He weathered a lot of peculiar adversity, and has come out on the other side as the linchpin of one of the league's best offenses. He might not even hit 20 homers this year, but with the ability to relentlessly lace singles and doubles and as one of the most efficient basestealers in baseball history, he's become the embodiment of this team's defiant brilliance in the first season of the Pat Murphy Era.

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[Brandon Glick]

Great article, Matt! I imagine Yelich will continue to give Cubs fan fits for years to come (grumble)...

[Outlander]

It's a great story, I certainly though he was never going to return to All-Star Form after 2022. 2023 was a glimmer and hope and he built upon that in 2024. Even nationally you can tell that fans root for him since he is leading the NL OF vote. Never thought I would utter the words of Yelich being an All Star Starter again but here we are.