Christian Yelich’s Improved Pitch Selection Is Unlocking His Inner MVP

For years, the Christian Yelich conundrum has boiled down to whether or not he can steer clear of ground balls, because his power (when he gets it in the air) is truly immense. This season, he may have found a formula to get back to that, and it involves his plate discipline. He still has a healthy habit of swiping below the strike zone, but elsewhere, the changes are monumental.

Chasing Inside
In his prime, MVP-caliber years of 2018 and 2019, Yelich could do damage all over the plate, but his main sources of excellence were in pulling balls over the heart of the plate, and going to the opposite field on balls on the outer third. He could pull balls thigh-high on the inner third, but other than that, he struggled to damage here. As you can see in 2023, the further inside Yelich chased, the more common the ground balls became, and he chased a lot in this area:

Fast-forward to 2024, and Yelich has taken an altogether different approach; he’s yet to chase a ball either inside or above the strike zone this season.

Not only is Yelich laying off these pitches inside, but notice that his swing rates are highest in the same areas as in the halcyon days. He’s being more selective, and honing in on those pitches he can elevate more often. He's taking more pitches than he did in his hay day, swinging less often at first pitches than has been his norm since 2020, but amalgamating the plate discipline and eye with an ability to mash mistakes can bring Yelich closer to his former MVP performance levels, even if it’s in a slightly different way. Speaking of mashing…

Crushing Mistakes
Something Yelich has struggled to do over the last few seasons is square up those mistake pitches, allowing for too much sub-optimal contact. This season, in the early stages, that’s changed:

Yelich has been absolutely torching balls thrown over the heart of the plate, and I’d wager that he may extend that to the outer half, too, if not for the lack of outer-third pitches seen so far this year. On middle-middle pitches, he’s averaging 106-mph exit velocities with a 17.7-degree launch angle.

As previously mentioned, ground balls have been a soul destroyer for Yelich in recent years, but a big advantage to his reduced chase rates has been an uptick in elevated balls, especially in the middle and bottom halves of the zone. It’s very early for this statistic, in particular, given its dispersion across three different markers, but Yelich currently has a sweet spot rate of 31.3%, considerably up from his 26% average since 2020, while also producing a launch angle of 12.1 degrees. If Christian Yelich can keep this even in double digits, this season can be absolute carnage.

One final indicator: Yelich is often lauded for his “opposite-field approach” by some commentators. However, his best seasons have come when he abandons this in favor of more of a pull-happy model. So far this year, Yelich has done exactly that, and look how neatly this blends into 2018/19:

In terms of his plate discipline, his approach to those pitches he can attack, and his ability to execute and elevate, Christian Yelich looks primed to take another step closer to his former dominant self. Health, as always, will be a big factor for the Brewers' main man, but 2024 may finally be the year Christian Yelich carries this offense to a whole other level.

What do you think of Yelich so far? Can you feel that glimmer of hope spurting in your chest? Let us know in the comments below!