Is Christian Yelich a Viable No. 3 Hitter in 2024?

Look around the internet a bit, and you’ll find some projections of the Brewers lineup that have Christian Yelich batting first, and others that have him batting third. Most sources agree that William Contreras will resume his frequent 2023 duties as the No. 2 hitter, and that Rhys Hoskins has come in to be the cleanup man, but Yelich and Sal Frelick keep being shuffled around. That’s because neither is exactly optimal as a third hitter. Willy Adames might be the closest thing the Brewers have to the ideal of that hitter type, but after Adames’s uneven 2023, it’s hard to pencil him into that slot, so it’s Yelich and Frelick who have populated it in most early formulations.

Each has obvious shortcomings, when it comes to a No. 3 hitter. Neither is a slugger in the conventional modern way. As has been well-documented, Frelick struggles with the simplest and most indispensable duty of a middle-of-the-order hitter: he just doesn’t hit the ball hard. Yelich does, but as Brewers fans know too well, it’s too often on the ground. Frelick’s best role is clearly at the very top of the lineup, or near the bottom. For Yelich, batting third should be more of a conversation, so let’s have it.

The biggest problem with having a ground ball hitter bat third is that they generally don’t hit for any power. For a few years, that was even true of Yelich, who otherwise impressively defies convention in this way. We all know about the transformation he undertook in 2018 and 2019, hitting the ball in the air often enough to tap into his extraordinary power potential and becoming one of the best players in the sport. After that fateful foul ball off his knee, though, he wallowed for three years in mediocrity, and specifically, he spent 2021 and 2022 buried in powerlessness. He slugged just .379 across those two seasons.

Last season, though, Yelich bounced back. Even as he was moved to the leadoff spot to maximize the value of his on-base skills and mitigate the impact of his deficient pop, he got some of that pop back. With a .447 slugging average and .169 ISO, Yelich still looked more like his pre-MVP self than the peak version, but it was a huge stride back in the right direction.

The ban on infield shifts probably helped. Yelich's BABIP leavened, which doesn't much affect his ISO but nudges his SLG upward by raising his batting average. It was more than just extra ground balls getting through, though. Yelich hit a few more balls straight down and got his best batted balls off the ground a bit more than he had over the previous few seasons, though not back to the level he reached when he nearly won two straight MVP awards.

Even relative to his 2015-17 self, Yelich hit fewer balls weakly and fewer in that maddening middle range (80-100 MPH ground balls, which turn into outs just about every time and into double plays when a guy bats third and comes up often with runners on base and less than two outs) last year. Let's also note the relative dearth of lazy fly balls. He was certainly driving the ball in the air less often than he did at his best, but he wasn't making many truly easy outs.

There's a segment of the charts above that might lend especially good insight: hard-hit balls (north of 95 miles per hour) at launch angles between -5 and 10 degrees.

These points are all colored according to expected weighted on-base average (xwOBA). As you can see, Yelich hit many fewer of the lowest-value balls in this subset (the ones at the lowest launch angles, below 0) in 2023 than in the past, even compared to his best years. He seems to have found the sweet spot, at least for one year, where he can hit the ball hard without sacrificing contact rate in order to try to lift it.

It's still unlikely that Yelich recaptures the kind of power you want from a No. 3 hitter. If he can sustain the small changes he made to his batted-ball profile in 2023, though, he shouldn't kill the team with double-play grounders. It's a fragile balance we're seeking here, and it's still an issue that Yelich and Contreras (in whichever order you prefer, the two best hitters on the team) are both ground-ball guys. It's not reasonable or necessary to expect Yelich to change his stripes now, though. He's going to generate sufficient punch to be a middle-of-the-order guy, even if his profile leans unusually heavily on OBP. With any luck, the Crew will be playing lots of first-to-third baseball at the top of the order in 2024, and it will be up to Hoskins to play the traditional cleanup role from there.

Are you optimistic about Yelich's 2024, based on the adjustments he made in 2023? How would you align the team, based on the current position-player roster? Join the conversation.