Christian Yelich's Best Swing, Right Now, is a Single—and That Has to Change

It's hard to put it any other way: Christian Yelich's bat path is broken. He's never been someone who could readily afford a downturn in launch angle, but that's exactly what he's seen this year. His average launch angle, in fact, is down from just over 5° last year to 0.2° this year. If you only saw that number, you'd be worried.

If I were to introduce his exit velocity data into the conversation, though, you might feel a bit more encouraged. Yes, Yelich's average exit velocity has slightly dipped this year, and his 90th-percentile exit velocity is down a full mile per hour (106.6, from 107.6 last year). However, the raw numbers he's posting in each category are above-average, and so is his swing speed. He seems to be moving freely enough to attack the ball the same way he always has. He's squaring it up a bit less often (i.e., he's not getting to the top end of the spectrum in terms of the share of possible exit velocity he's realized, based on the speed of incoming pitches and of his swing), so that explains away the exit velocity dip almost on its own. His surface-level numbers (.199/.295/.349) are ugly, but the expected numbers suggest he should be a bit better. He's already blasted seven home runs and stolen eight bases. Should we dispense with worry and just check back in a month or so?

Alas: it's not that simple. Yelich is showing tangible signs of having his swing plane out of whack, in a way that threatens to make him persistently anemic at the plate. We mentioned that he meets Statcast's criteria for a Squared Up ball less often this year. That's one problem. Here's another, though: even when he does square up the ball, Yelich's average launch angle this year is 4°.

In the parts of three seasons for which we have bat-tracking data, there are 940 player-seasons in which a given hitter has had at least 50 Suqared Up balls. Here are Yelich's rankings on that list of 940:

• 2023: 7°, 879th
• 2024: 10°, 797th
• 2025: 4°, 931st

Last year, we saw Yelich start getting the ball on a line more often. It was how he recovered his power, at least to some extent, and at least until he began to crumble a bit in July. Now, on the other side of the back trouble that drove him out of the lineup and compelled him to undergo surgery that ended his season, Yelich is truly a basement-dweller when it comes to lifting the balls on which he's getting the best part of the bat. 

Here's the obvious danger in that kind of swing: Yelich getting a 3-2 fastball, ripping cleanly through it to generate a 107-MPH exit velocity, and leaving with nothing but a 5-3 putout to show for it.

The real and more pernicious problems, though, are more subtle. A swing as flat and downpointed as Yelich's is more prone to whiffs. That's why he's not squaring up the ball as often as he has in the past, too. He's not on plane with the pitch, so misses are more likely. Hence his 31.2% whiff rate on swings this year, worse than every year of his career except 2020—the last season in which he was coming back from a severe, season-ending injury.

Almost as badly, his best swings right now look a lot like this.

Though hit almost 105 MPH and with a positive launch angle (7°), this has no chance to be anything more than a single. Yelich is, functionally, where a lot of talented but lost sluggers find themselves in their mid-20s, right before they discover the slight change in approach and swing path that unlocks a barrage of home runs for them. Unfortunately, Yelich already had his version of that epiphany, and he's now approaching his mid-30s. He's unlikely now, even more than before, to undergo some transformation a la J.D. Martinez, thereby tapping into his raw power anew. Much more likely, it would seem, is a long bout of frustration rooted in swings that feel fast and contact that feels flush—but batted balls that turn either into semi-routine outs or into underwhelming singles.

Surely, the back is playing a role in this. Very slight tilts of the spine can help a hitter make crucial mid-swing adjustments and get on plane with the ball, almost subconsciously. Yelich doesn't look capable of them right now. He's as upright as he's ever been at the plate, and while he's trained himself to create as much rotational force as ever, the rest of the package that creates power—the elements of loft—is missing. If he can't rediscover it, he's not going to turn back into a productive slugger for the Brewers, and without him doing so, the Crew will struggle to score runs all year.