When is it time to worry about Christian Yelich?

[adambr2]

His contract is so bad at this point that I might try to trade him for whatever we can get assuming the team takes the entirety of the contract off our hands which would obviously be disappointing to get nothing for a b2b MVP but his contract literally has the ability to ruin the franchise.

 

Also his contract isn't "bad." He was called a sucker for signing it.

 

That's because a lot of people don't seem to understand that the farther away a player is from free agency when they sign an extension, the less leverage they have. Yelich was 3 years away from free agency when he signed, and a lot can happen in 3 years, as we are learning.

 

If he had been going into free agency this year his market would probably have been 10/$350M, but he's not going to get that 3 years out. I don't think he was a sucker, nor do I think his contract is bad (not yet, anyway). Simple exchange of potential future earnings for current security.

[Madhawk23]

Cody Bellinger is hitting .218 with a .715 OPS.

 

Javy Baez is hitting .203 with a .601 OPS.

 

JD Martinez is hitting .205 with a .648 OPS

 

There's a lot of dudes struggling this year.

 

Anthony Rizzo and Kris Bryant have also been terrible, while David freaking Bote looks like Carl Yastrzemski. 2020 is a weird, sucky year.

 

My question then is: what's causing all of these great players to struggle so much this year? Just seems so odd that you have a bunch of these MVP level players all hitting around .200. I can't speak for all of these other guys, but Yeli just has no clue at the plate right now. It can't be a different baseball, because he's not even making contact with it 1/2 of the time - so that's not the issue. Like others have said - he's swinging right through FB's down the middle of the plate, and looks like he's seeing breaking balls for the first time in his life as he pulls off the ball and whiffs way over the top of them. I just don't get it.

 

At this point, I honestly wouldn't be mad if they faked an injury for him and just shut him down the rest of the year. Give him the final two weeks of the season to clear his mind and then send him to AZ this fall (if they are allowed to open up the ST facilities) to have him work on his swing for a month (or however long it takes to get things right again). A 1-2 day mental break won't do it at this point.

[Madhawk23]

Cody Bellinger is hitting .218 with a .715 OPS.

 

Javy Baez is hitting .203 with a .601 OPS.

 

JD Martinez is hitting .205 with a .648 OPS

 

There's a lot of dudes struggling this year.

 

Anthony Rizzo and Kris Bryant have also been terrible, while David freaking Bote looks like Carl Yastrzemski. 2020 is a weird, sucky year.

 

My question then is: what's causing all of these great players to struggle so much this year? Just seems so odd that you have a bunch of these MVP level players all hitting around .200. I can't speak for all of these other guys, but Yeli just has no clue at the plate right now. It can't be a different baseball, because he's not even making contact with it 1/2 of the time - so that's not the issue. Like others have said - he's swinging right through FB's down the middle of the plate, and looks like he's seeing breaking balls for the first time in his life as he pulls off the ball and whiffs way over the top of them. I just don't get it.

 

At this point, I honestly wouldn't be mad if they faked an injury for him and just shut him down the rest of the year. Give him the final two weeks of the season to clear his mind and then send him to AZ this fall (if they are allowed to open up the ST facilities) to have him work on his swing for a month (or however long it takes to get things right again). A 1-2 day mental break won't do it at this point.

[Madhawk23]

Cody Bellinger is hitting .218 with a .715 OPS.

 

Javy Baez is hitting .203 with a .601 OPS.

 

JD Martinez is hitting .205 with a .648 OPS

 

There's a lot of dudes struggling this year.

 

Anthony Rizzo and Kris Bryant have also been terrible, while David freaking Bote looks like Carl Yastrzemski. 2020 is a weird, sucky year.

 

My question then is: what's causing all of these great players to struggle so much this year? Just seems so odd that you have a bunch of these MVP level players all hitting around .200. I can't speak for all of these other guys, but Yeli just has no clue at the plate right now. It can't be a different baseball, because he's not even making contact with it 1/2 of the time - so that's not the issue. Like others have said - he's swinging right through FB's down the middle of the plate, and looks like he's seeing breaking balls for the first time in his life as he pulls off the ball and whiffs way over the top of them. I just don't get it.

 

At this point, I honestly wouldn't be mad if they faked an injury for him and just shut him down the rest of the year. Give him the final two weeks of the season to clear his mind and then send him to AZ this fall (if they are allowed to open up the ST facilities) to have him work on his swing for a month (or however long it takes to get things right again). A 1-2 day mental break won't do it at this point.

[RobDeer 45]

Yep, as others have stated, my thought was, next year. I'm not putting much in to any stats for players this year because of the pandemic. Add the fact he's coming off injury, it's not surprising he's struggled.

[RobDeer 45]

Yep, as others have stated, my thought was, next year. I'm not putting much in to any stats for players this year because of the pandemic. Add the fact he's coming off injury, it's not surprising he's struggled.

[RobDeer 45]

Yep, as others have stated, my thought was, next year. I'm not putting much in to any stats for players this year because of the pandemic. Add the fact he's coming off injury, it's not surprising he's struggled.

[Warning Track Power]

Is it time to be concerned this, or something close to it, is the new Yelich?

relax, roxane.

Funny Seems like a lot of others are concerned as well.

 

As was mentioned earlier, it’s not just the lack of counting stats. It’s the way he appears to those who watch daily. Swinging through fastballs and taking breaking pitches down the middle aren’t things were used to seeing. The biggest concern to me appears to be the lack of discipline at the plate and chasing outside the zone, which he rarely did in 2018 and 2019.

 

I by no means am advocating a trade and think it would be foolish to do so. But Yelich has a substantial amount of work to do in the offseason it would appear.

[Warning Track Power]

Is it time to be concerned this, or something close to it, is the new Yelich?

relax, roxane.

Funny Seems like a lot of others are concerned as well.

 

As was mentioned earlier, it’s not just the lack of counting stats. It’s the way he appears to those who watch daily. Swinging through fastballs and taking breaking pitches down the middle aren’t things were used to seeing. The biggest concern to me appears to be the lack of discipline at the plate and chasing outside the zone, which he rarely did in 2018 and 2019.

 

I by no means am advocating a trade and think it would be foolish to do so. But Yelich has a substantial amount of work to do in the offseason it would appear.

[Warning Track Power]

Is it time to be concerned this, or something close to it, is the new Yelich?

relax, roxane.

Funny Seems like a lot of others are concerned as well.

 

As was mentioned earlier, it’s not just the lack of counting stats. It’s the way he appears to those who watch daily. Swinging through fastballs and taking breaking pitches down the middle aren’t things were used to seeing. The biggest concern to me appears to be the lack of discipline at the plate and chasing outside the zone, which he rarely did in 2018 and 2019.

 

I by no means am advocating a trade and think it would be foolish to do so. But Yelich has a substantial amount of work to do in the offseason it would appear.

[DuWayne Steurer]

Cody Bellinger is hitting .218 with a .715 OPS.

 

Javy Baez is hitting .203 with a .601 OPS.

 

JD Martinez is hitting .205 with a .648 OPS

 

There's a lot of dudes struggling this year.

 

Anthony Rizzo and Kris Bryant have also been terrible, while David freaking Bote looks like Carl Yastrzemski. 2020 is a weird, sucky year.

 

My question then is: what's causing all of these great players to struggle so much this year? Just seems so odd that you have a bunch of these MVP level players all hitting around .200. I can't speak for all of these other guys, but Yeli just has no clue at the plate right now. It can't be a different baseball, because he's not even making contact with it 1/2 of the time - so that's not the issue. Like others have said - he's swinging right through FB's down the middle of the plate, and looks like he's seeing breaking balls for the first time in his life as he pulls off the ball and whiffs way over the top of them. I just don't get it.

 

At this point, I honestly wouldn't be mad if they faked an injury for him and just shut him down the rest of the year. Give him the final two weeks of the season to clear his mind and then send him to AZ this fall (if they are allowed to open up the ST facilities) to have him work on his swing for a month (or however long it takes to get things right again). A 1-2 day mental break won't do it at this point.

 

My guess, and it's just a guess...

 

For some of these guys it was probably the huge change to what has become an incredibly structured routine. Spring training specific drills spring training games and then the season. That was all interrupted and everything's been thrown completely out of whack. They didn't even get spring training games all they did was face their own pitchers from their own team for a few weeks in July.

 

More than a few players have complained about not being able to watch video in between at bats. I know the counter argument would be that shouldn't be that big a deal, and I agree. If you go back to a time when they didn't have video rooms or things like that.... But they do have that now and that is what these guys are used to. It's a tool they have and suddenly they don't and it is completely changed their routine. we could argue whether or not it should have ever been allowed. But it has been allowed and now it has been taken away.

 

For yelich, maybe he's still finding his timing after the knee injury but when you look at guys like bellinger and Baez and others who are struggling, there's more to it. The game has completely tilted in favor of pitchers. It's horribly boring to watch now. Teams are averaging over 9Ks per 9 innings.I have always firmly been in the strikeouts don't matter camp, but watching teams struggle to just put balls in play is just incredibly boring, and this season especially, with no fans in the stands and teams striking out at an absurd pace and star players putting up middle infield stats...

[DuWayne Steurer]

Cody Bellinger is hitting .218 with a .715 OPS.

 

Javy Baez is hitting .203 with a .601 OPS.

 

JD Martinez is hitting .205 with a .648 OPS

 

There's a lot of dudes struggling this year.

 

Anthony Rizzo and Kris Bryant have also been terrible, while David freaking Bote looks like Carl Yastrzemski. 2020 is a weird, sucky year.

 

My question then is: what's causing all of these great players to struggle so much this year? Just seems so odd that you have a bunch of these MVP level players all hitting around .200. I can't speak for all of these other guys, but Yeli just has no clue at the plate right now. It can't be a different baseball, because he's not even making contact with it 1/2 of the time - so that's not the issue. Like others have said - he's swinging right through FB's down the middle of the plate, and looks like he's seeing breaking balls for the first time in his life as he pulls off the ball and whiffs way over the top of them. I just don't get it.

 

At this point, I honestly wouldn't be mad if they faked an injury for him and just shut him down the rest of the year. Give him the final two weeks of the season to clear his mind and then send him to AZ this fall (if they are allowed to open up the ST facilities) to have him work on his swing for a month (or however long it takes to get things right again). A 1-2 day mental break won't do it at this point.

 

My guess, and it's just a guess...

 

For some of these guys it was probably the huge change to what has become an incredibly structured routine. Spring training specific drills spring training games and then the season. That was all interrupted and everything's been thrown completely out of whack. They didn't even get spring training games all they did was face their own pitchers from their own team for a few weeks in July.

 

More than a few players have complained about not being able to watch video in between at bats. I know the counter argument would be that shouldn't be that big a deal, and I agree. If you go back to a time when they didn't have video rooms or things like that.... But they do have that now and that is what these guys are used to. It's a tool they have and suddenly they don't and it is completely changed their routine. we could argue whether or not it should have ever been allowed. But it has been allowed and now it has been taken away.

 

For yelich, maybe he's still finding his timing after the knee injury but when you look at guys like bellinger and Baez and others who are struggling, there's more to it. The game has completely tilted in favor of pitchers. It's horribly boring to watch now. Teams are averaging over 9Ks per 9 innings.I have always firmly been in the strikeouts don't matter camp, but watching teams struggle to just put balls in play is just incredibly boring, and this season especially, with no fans in the stands and teams striking out at an absurd pace and star players putting up middle infield stats...

[DuWayne Steurer]

Cody Bellinger is hitting .218 with a .715 OPS.

 

Javy Baez is hitting .203 with a .601 OPS.

 

JD Martinez is hitting .205 with a .648 OPS

 

There's a lot of dudes struggling this year.

 

Anthony Rizzo and Kris Bryant have also been terrible, while David freaking Bote looks like Carl Yastrzemski. 2020 is a weird, sucky year.

 

My question then is: what's causing all of these great players to struggle so much this year? Just seems so odd that you have a bunch of these MVP level players all hitting around .200. I can't speak for all of these other guys, but Yeli just has no clue at the plate right now. It can't be a different baseball, because he's not even making contact with it 1/2 of the time - so that's not the issue. Like others have said - he's swinging right through FB's down the middle of the plate, and looks like he's seeing breaking balls for the first time in his life as he pulls off the ball and whiffs way over the top of them. I just don't get it.

 

At this point, I honestly wouldn't be mad if they faked an injury for him and just shut him down the rest of the year. Give him the final two weeks of the season to clear his mind and then send him to AZ this fall (if they are allowed to open up the ST facilities) to have him work on his swing for a month (or however long it takes to get things right again). A 1-2 day mental break won't do it at this point.

 

My guess, and it's just a guess...

 

For some of these guys it was probably the huge change to what has become an incredibly structured routine. Spring training specific drills spring training games and then the season. That was all interrupted and everything's been thrown completely out of whack. They didn't even get spring training games all they did was face their own pitchers from their own team for a few weeks in July.

 

More than a few players have complained about not being able to watch video in between at bats. I know the counter argument would be that shouldn't be that big a deal, and I agree. If you go back to a time when they didn't have video rooms or things like that.... But they do have that now and that is what these guys are used to. It's a tool they have and suddenly they don't and it is completely changed their routine. we could argue whether or not it should have ever been allowed. But it has been allowed and now it has been taken away.

 

For yelich, maybe he's still finding his timing after the knee injury but when you look at guys like bellinger and Baez and others who are struggling, there's more to it. The game has completely tilted in favor of pitchers. It's horribly boring to watch now. Teams are averaging over 9Ks per 9 innings.I have always firmly been in the strikeouts don't matter camp, but watching teams struggle to just put balls in play is just incredibly boring, and this season especially, with no fans in the stands and teams striking out at an absurd pace and star players putting up middle infield stats...

[dlk9s]

It seems like he is subconsciously protecting his knee. He bails out/steps in the bucket so often that it looks like he's scared. I doubt he's consciously scared, which is why I think his brain is just instinctively trying to keep his knee safe.

 

[/armchair psychiatrist]

[dlk9s]

It seems like he is subconsciously protecting his knee. He bails out/steps in the bucket so often that it looks like he's scared. I doubt he's consciously scared, which is why I think his brain is just instinctively trying to keep his knee safe.

 

[/armchair psychiatrist]

[dlk9s]

It seems like he is subconsciously protecting his knee. He bails out/steps in the bucket so often that it looks like he's scared. I doubt he's consciously scared, which is why I think his brain is just instinctively trying to keep his knee safe.

 

[/armchair psychiatrist]

[igor67]

I wonder if the tilt towards pitching is enabled by the shorter season. Similar to how most pitchers can switch to the bullpen and improve, the starters have so much less season to save yourself for.

[igor67]

I wonder if the tilt towards pitching is enabled by the shorter season. Similar to how most pitchers can switch to the bullpen and improve, the starters have so much less season to save yourself for.

[igor67]

I wonder if the tilt towards pitching is enabled by the shorter season. Similar to how most pitchers can switch to the bullpen and improve, the starters have so much less season to save yourself for.

[Lathund]

The time to worry for me is if he has a mostly normal offseason and spring training and is still struggling like this a couple of months into 2021.

 

It's also worth pointing out that it's not been all bad. He had an awful start, 1-27 and 3-34. Had a wRC+ of -4 I think it was before that inside the park HR. Over the next couple of weeks he got that up to at most a 115 wRC+, and had a 29 game on-base streak going, before struggling again over the last couple of weeks. You can even find a 1 month stretch in there where he had a 150 wRC+.

 

He has issues; seemingly with timing up pitches and with swings and misses on pitches he'd make hard contact with previously. But Statcast data can tell us a thing or two as well. He's still 97th percentile in exit velocity, 94th in hard hit rate. xwOBA, which weighs quality of contact together with strikeouts and walks, has him at .366. That's lower than the ~.425 he averaged over the last two years, but right in line with two of the three Miami seasons in the Statcast era. Or for the sake of comparison, it's .002 on either side of AL rookie of the year candidates Luis Robert and Kyle Lewis, just below Mike Yastrzemski.

 

Again, I am concerned with the extra swings and misses. But I'm also not overly concerned, despite those swings and misses he hasn't been quite as bad as results suggest. He hasn't just suddenly forgotten how to hit. He still hits the ball extremely hard when he connects. Seems like he's having some mechanical issues, issues that are probably made worse by the mental aspect of it, that he's pressing so hard. It's fixable.

 

It's also worth keeping in mind that was this a normal season, we'd by now be in mid-late May. Being a roughly league-average hitter (98 wRC+) at that stage of the season is not the time to panic. There are many worse 6-7 week slumps out there by great hitters. Perhaps this isn't something he'll get through in the middle of the season, but he will in the offseason.

 

The biggest concern to me appears to be the lack of discipline at the plate and chasing outside the zone, which he rarely did in 2018 and 2019.

 

He's actually swinging at fewer pitches outside the zone than he has at any other season, significantly less than in 2018 or 2019. He's got issues, but that's not one of them.

[Lathund]

The time to worry for me is if he has a mostly normal offseason and spring training and is still struggling like this a couple of months into 2021.

 

It's also worth pointing out that it's not been all bad. He had an awful start, 1-27 and 3-34. Had a wRC+ of -4 I think it was before that inside the park HR. Over the next couple of weeks he got that up to at most a 115 wRC+, and had a 29 game on-base streak going, before struggling again over the last couple of weeks. You can even find a 1 month stretch in there where he had a 150 wRC+.

 

He has issues; seemingly with timing up pitches and with swings and misses on pitches he'd make hard contact with previously. But Statcast data can tell us a thing or two as well. He's still 97th percentile in exit velocity, 94th in hard hit rate. xwOBA, which weighs quality of contact together with strikeouts and walks, has him at .366. That's lower than the ~.425 he averaged over the last two years, but right in line with two of the three Miami seasons in the Statcast era. Or for the sake of comparison, it's .002 on either side of AL rookie of the year candidates Luis Robert and Kyle Lewis, just below Mike Yastrzemski.

 

Again, I am concerned with the extra swings and misses. But I'm also not overly concerned, despite those swings and misses he hasn't been quite as bad as results suggest. He hasn't just suddenly forgotten how to hit. He still hits the ball extremely hard when he connects. Seems like he's having some mechanical issues, issues that are probably made worse by the mental aspect of it, that he's pressing so hard. It's fixable.

 

It's also worth keeping in mind that was this a normal season, we'd by now be in mid-late May. Being a roughly league-average hitter (98 wRC+) at that stage of the season is not the time to panic. There are many worse 6-7 week slumps out there by great hitters. Perhaps this isn't something he'll get through in the middle of the season, but he will in the offseason.

 

The biggest concern to me appears to be the lack of discipline at the plate and chasing outside the zone, which he rarely did in 2018 and 2019.

 

He's actually swinging at fewer pitches outside the zone than he has at any other season, significantly less than in 2018 or 2019. He's got issues, but that's not one of them.

[Lathund]

The time to worry for me is if he has a mostly normal offseason and spring training and is still struggling like this a couple of months into 2021.

 

It's also worth pointing out that it's not been all bad. He had an awful start, 1-27 and 3-34. Had a wRC+ of -4 I think it was before that inside the park HR. Over the next couple of weeks he got that up to at most a 115 wRC+, and had a 29 game on-base streak going, before struggling again over the last couple of weeks. You can even find a 1 month stretch in there where he had a 150 wRC+.

 

He has issues; seemingly with timing up pitches and with swings and misses on pitches he'd make hard contact with previously. But Statcast data can tell us a thing or two as well. He's still 97th percentile in exit velocity, 94th in hard hit rate. xwOBA, which weighs quality of contact together with strikeouts and walks, has him at .366. That's lower than the ~.425 he averaged over the last two years, but right in line with two of the three Miami seasons in the Statcast era. Or for the sake of comparison, it's .002 on either side of AL rookie of the year candidates Luis Robert and Kyle Lewis, just below Mike Yastrzemski.

 

Again, I am concerned with the extra swings and misses. But I'm also not overly concerned, despite those swings and misses he hasn't been quite as bad as results suggest. He hasn't just suddenly forgotten how to hit. He still hits the ball extremely hard when he connects. Seems like he's having some mechanical issues, issues that are probably made worse by the mental aspect of it, that he's pressing so hard. It's fixable.

 

It's also worth keeping in mind that was this a normal season, we'd by now be in mid-late May. Being a roughly league-average hitter (98 wRC+) at that stage of the season is not the time to panic. There are many worse 6-7 week slumps out there by great hitters. Perhaps this isn't something he'll get through in the middle of the season, but he will in the offseason.

 

The biggest concern to me appears to be the lack of discipline at the plate and chasing outside the zone, which he rarely did in 2018 and 2019.

 

He's actually swinging at fewer pitches outside the zone than he has at any other season, significantly less than in 2018 or 2019. He's got issues, but that's not one of them.

[CheezWizHed]

[sarcasm]I blame Corbin Burnes.[/sarcasm]

[CheezWizHed]

[sarcasm]I blame Corbin Burnes.[/sarcasm]

[CheezWizHed]

[sarcasm]I blame Corbin Burnes.[/sarcasm]