Christian Yelich Looks Locked-In at Right Time for Brewers

[Jack Stern]

Image courtesy of Michael McLoone-Imagn Images

Despite being a mostly productive constant on and off the field through the Brewers’ last eight playoff berths, Christian Yelich has largely been a non-factor in the postseason. Entering this October, Yelich was a career .218/.347/.317 playoff hitter (84 OPS+). Despite usually hitting somewhere in the middle of the order, he has gone 74 at-bats without a playoff RBI, last driving in a run with his home run in Game 7 of the 2018 NLCS.

That was still a small sample of just 121 postseason plate appearances, though. The real concern, entering the NLDS, was Yelich coming off his worst regular season. He was a below-average hitter for the first time in his career, hitting .235/.315/.378 (91 wRC+). At times, his swing looked stiffer and less adaptable.

Even if Yelich is more limited as he enters his mid-30s, that doesn’t mean all of his skills have disappeared. His bat speed is nearly identical to last year, and he still makes sound swing decisions, running the third-lowest chase rate among Milwaukee hitters with at least 400 plate appearances. Pitches over the inner third of the plate became problematic this year, but when Yelich gets one over the middle or the outer third, there’s still enough juice in his bat to drive it.

Those tools have helped Yelich start strong this October. He’s reached base three times in the first two games of the NLDS, but more importantly, he’s looked dialed-in from pitch to pitch. Here are all 30 pitches Yelich has seen in the series so far:

Those are outstanding swing decisions. Yelich hasn’t offered at much outside the zone, including several near-misses just off the outside corner. Some of his best takes came in his ninth-inning walk on Sunday, the first of three walks against Mason Miller in the Brewers’ walk-off rally against one of baseball’s best closers.

Yelich isn’t just getting away with being passive, either. He’s swung at nearly every pitch in the zone that hasn’t been on the corner, and those swings have looked solid. Yelich has put five balls in play so far, and three were well struck.

Jackson Chourio and William Contreras have gotten attention for the biggest swings of the series, but Yelich has quietly had some of the best plate appearances. He broke up Michael King’s perfect game with a fifth-inning double in Game 2, then scored Milwaukee’s first run on Sal Frelick’s single. Yelich started turning the gears against Miller a few innings later. He may have sparked an earlier seventh-inning rally, had Jackson Merrill not made a leaping catch near the center-field wall.

It’s a microscopic sample, so those positive plate appearances are hardly guaranteed to continue, but they’re worth highlighting. After his regular season, there was a valid argument that Yelich was not one of the nine best hitters worth starting in the Brewers’ playoff lineup. Now, process-wise, he looks like the best version of what he can be at this stage in his career.

The Brewers named Yelich the first captain in franchise history during the final weekend of the regular season, but the expectation of driving the offense is now on Chourio, Contreras, Brice Turang, and other younger, more dynamic hitters. That might afford Yelich the freedom he needed this fall. He can still lengthen the lineup as a supporting contributor in the bottom half of the order. The first two games of the NLDS have hinted that this October could be different for the Brewers, and it could be different for him, too.

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[Michael Trzinski]

I wonder if Yeli saw Big Papi's pep talk on the pre-game show before Game 2...lol.