Yelich: a new (old) man or a mirage?

[Brock Beauchamp]

Yelich has shown a couple of glimpses of not being the 2021 version of himself but there has also been more than a fair share of hard grounders to the right side of the infield, too. Overall, his stats are improved but far from his MVP seasons.

Some upsides: his exit velo is up, back well into the territory he can once again be a good hitter. And even more importantly, his barrel rate is way up.

Are we seeing a version of Yelich that is somewhere between his MVP seasons and his disappointing 2020/21 campaigns or is this a blip on the radar and he's destined to return to where he ended up last season?

 

Season	Age	Pitches	Batted Balls	Barrels	Barrel %	Barrel/PA	Exit Velocity	Max EV	Launch Angle	Sweet Spot %	XBA	XSLG	WOBA	XWOBA	XWOBACON	HardHit%	K%	BB%
2015	24	2125	375	18	4.8	3.4	91.7	112.5	0.1	30.1	.304	.443	.343	.358	.415	45.1	19.2	9
2016	25	2715	445	43	9.7	6.5	92.6	113.6	2.7	31.9	.306	.512	.367	.387	.461	49.9	20.9	10.9
2017	26	2883	471	33	7	4.8	90.6	112.4	4.6	29.5	.287	.460	.348	.362	.410	45.8	19.7	11.5
2018	27	2532	441	57	12.9	8.8	92.6	113.6	5	36.7	.318	.568	.422	.416	.498	50.8	20.7	10.4
2019	28	2284	374	59	15.8	10.2	93.3	117.9	11.3	33.2	.315	.630	.442	.430	.514	49.1	20.2	13.8
2020	29	1100	124	15	12.1	6.1	94	112	7.1	32.3	.250	.473	.343	.378	.494	55.6	30.8	18.6
2021	30	2012	289	22	7.6	4.6	91	114.9	2.8	29.4	.254	.392	.325	.337	.385	48.8	23.8	14.7
2022	31	103	14	2	14.3	7.7	93.3	110.6	2.3	28.6	.276	.431	.363	.378	.402	71.4	23.1	19.2
Player		15754	2533	249	9.8	6.5	92.1	117.9	4.6	31.9	.296	.503	.374	.383	.452	48.7	21.3	12.1
MLB					6.6	4.5	88.3	122.2	12	32.9	.246	.408	.317	.316	.369	35.5	22	8.4

[KeithStone53151]

Most likely he comes in somewhere between in my opinion. That form is hard for anyone to match, but he's clearly more confident at the plate now than he was. Worth noting, conditions have been difficult for the HR ball. The entire team has I think 3 total so far and at least a few would have been out at miller park but died at the track in wrigley. I also have seen him take 2 called strike 3's that were not strikes already this season, one on a full count that obviously should have then been a walk. At this stage, those couple bad calls had a pretty significant impact on his ratios.

[Brock Beauchamp]

1 minute ago, KeithStone53151 said:

Most likely he comes in somewhere between in my opinion. That form is hard for anyone to match, but he's clearly more confident at the plate now than he was. Worth noting, conditions have been difficult for the HR ball. The entire team has I think 3 total so far and at least a few would have been out at miller park but died at the track in wrigley. I also have seen him take 2 called strike 3's that were not strikes already this season, one on a full count that obviously should have then been a walk. At this stage, those couple bad calls had a pretty significant impact on his ratios.

Yeah, I think the weather has been a factor, which only helps Yelich's case starting today with the return home.

I don't believe Yelich will return to MVP form but if he can return his OPS north of .800, that changes the entire landscape of the Brewers lineup and makes them far more formidable in 2022.

[BallFour]

You will know Yelich is right if he starts performing at home. That was what was so disappointing about last year is his OPS was slightly worse at home then on the road.

[Samurai Bucky]

I would have thought the HHB rate would be more in line with the Sweet Spot %.  I'm happy his K% is lower.  Can't really help out much if you don't put the ball in play.

[NBBrewFan]

We're a little short on data points so I'll guess (and agree with Keith) that he is probably somewhere in between,  That's great compared to 2020/2021. I would like to see him just kill balls in the strike zone before I would hope to hope that he's back closer to the MVP levels.  When he was dialed in he just crushed balls in the strike zone (and sometimes outside), but he really made the pitcher regret throwing him something to hit. Now? I think he still has a ways to improve, but even if he regresses slightly from where he's at now, that still is a win for the team.

[torts]

Looking at data right now is kind of not worth it because of SSS.

Small.

Sample.

Size.

I am hopeful that he ends up MVP caliber again because an eternal spring of hope radiates from my soul.

[Brock Beauchamp]

18 minutes ago, torts said:

Looking at data right now is kind of not worth it because of SSS.

Small.

Sample.

Size.

I am hopeful that he ends up MVP caliber again because an eternal spring of hope radiates from my soul.

Oh, for sure. I actually refer to what we're seeing right now as SSSS (super small sample size) because SSS (small sample size) isn't entirely adequate.

But the early results are certainly promising.

[DoubleSwitch]

He looks more confident every game. He still hits a lot of balls on the ground, but he did that in 2018 and 2019. He doesn't have to be a 600+ slg monster to still be really really good. Even if he's only a 450-475 slg guy now, I think he could run a 20+% walk rate if pitchers have to respect his power even a little bit.

[sveumrules]

Yelich has always hit a lot of ground balls, but he’s also consistently matched it with high BABIPs, .344 with the Brewers (10th in MLB since 2018) & .356 with the Marlins. Even in a down year last season he was at .321 BABIP.

Christian showed up in Dan Szymborski’s 2022 Bust Candidates article this week which was interesting because it included his ZiPS percentile outcomes chart…

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/szymborskis-2022-bust-candidates-hitters/ 

Essentially ZiPS believes his 90% outcome is MVP Yelich (172 OPS+) & his 50% outcome is Marlins Yelich (126 OPS+). Something like last two years Yelich (100-110 OPS+) comes in around 20-30%.

Which of the infinite possibilities will we actually experience over the next six months? I don’t know, but I’m curious to find out.

[Brock Beauchamp]

The more I'm immersed in this community, the more I'm starting to realize Christian Yelich is the Brewer version of Joe Mauer.

Highly regarded outside of the community but borderline reviled by some parts within.

He's a left-handed hitter who makes contact and isn't great at elevation but hammers the piss out of the ball when he barrels it. Yeah, that's Joe Mauer. And it's Christian Yelich.

In the case of Mauer, he never recovered from his head injury. I hope the same isn't the case with Yelich with his knee injury and right now, I'm pretty hopeful that isn't the case.

[igor67]

Mauer is definitely an interesting comp. Sure it's early but so many of the advanced analytics on Yelich early this season really for me are strongly supporting that resurgence. MVP level is unlikely but he is swinging only at the good stuff and is smacking the ball hard a lot when he does swing. The wheels are certainly still there as well. He already has as many extra base hits as he had by the end of May last year 

[Lathund]

I don't think Yelich will be the kind of HR-hitting machine that he was in 2018-19, I think that type of hitter is gone. But I think that with the plate discipline he has, he can be a productive hitter even if the ball stays on the ground a lot. Over these last two seasons he had some real issues (Extreme passivity combined with lower contact % than ever in 2020, and fixing those things in 2021 but losing all power and the ability to hit it in the air), and his floor has still remained as a league-average hitter (112 and 101 wRC+) because of that OBP. I think that even with just a small improvemenet to the batted ball profile, we'll have at least Miami Yelich back.

It is encouraging so far to see that we seem to have the contact ability and plate discipline of 2021, and power a bit more like 2020. Absolutely tiny sample size of course, but I'd rather see a positive trend in that tiny sample than a negative one. 

[NBBrewFan]

1 hour ago, Lathund said:

I don't think Yelich will be the kind of HR-hitting machine that he was in 2018-19, I think that type of hitter is gone.

That got me thinking are we ignoring a confounding/contributing factor where most of those hitters are gone because of the changes MLB required Rawlings to make to the baseball.  2019 was the year of the insane ISO from a lot of poor hitters including a recent Brewers whipping boy (Eric Sogard) who saw a 60% increase in his ISO compared to his best season (with >100PA). There are many examples of that power spike that disappeared once the baseball changed. Maybe Yelich, like a lot of hitters, will never see the same level of "power"/"HR-hitting" simply because the ball has been changed.  So an 80% of MVP may be the best we can hope for in the current "environment".  We should at least recognize that there are multiple factors influencing his "fall" from those MVP season.  It also indicates that we should also temper our expectations that Keston returns to 2019 form, since the conditions around the 2019 "form" don't exist.

[jerichoholicninja]

Mauer's value was his offense as a catcher. Once he couldn't catch anymore with his declining hitting skills he was borderline 4A for a 1B but paid like a superstar. His was a really unique and unfortunate situation.

[Brock Beauchamp]

4 minutes ago, jerichoholicninja said:

Mauer's value was his offense as a catcher. Once he couldn't catch anymore with his declining hitting skills he was borderline 4A for a 1B but paid like a superstar. His was a really unique and unfortunate situation.

Even when Mauer was at the top of his game, there was a contingent of Twins fans that hated him because "not dingers". It was the weirdest experience I've had as a sports fan. Literally EVERYTHING about Mauer should have made Twins fans love him - a catcher, hometown boy, broke records - and instead many Twins fans obsessed about the things he didn't do.

In a bizarre twist of fate, one had to actually leave Minnesota to get a reasoned take on Mauer's greatness.

[SeaBass]

2 hours ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

Even when Mauer was at the top of his game, there was a contingent of Twins fans that hated him because "not dingers". It was the weirdest experience I've had as a sports fan. Literally EVERYTHING about Mauer should have made Twins fans love him - a catcher, hometown boy, broke records - and instead many Twins fans obsessed about the things he didn't do.

In a bizarre twist of fate, one had to actually leave Minnesota to get a reasoned take on Mauer's greatness.

This made me think of Jeff Cirillo who was probably a little underappreciated in his time. He also wasn't quite at Mauer's level at either player's prime level. He was still popular with Brewers fans don't get me wrong, but the lack of high HR numbers likely prevented him from being as popular around the league as he should have been.

[brewers888]

On 4/14/2022 at 10:57 PM, Brock Beauchamp said:

The more I'm immersed in this community, the more I'm starting to realize Christian Yelich is the Brewer version of Joe Mauer.

Highly regarded outside of the community but borderline reviled by some parts within.

He's a left-handed hitter who makes contact and isn't great at elevation but hammers the piss out of the ball when he barrels it. Yeah, that's Joe Mauer. And it's Christian Yelich.

In the case of Mauer, he never recovered from his head injury. I hope the same isn't the case with Yelich with his knee injury and right now, I'm pretty hopeful that isn't the case.

Much like the Twins this is a team with a limited payroll so when your one big ticket item is struggling as Yelich is the fans are going to be upset.

[Robocaller]

What I don't get is why don't they bat Yelich 2nd? Or first? His obp isn't bad, but he doesn't have any power anymore. Historically he's batted best 2nd in the order.

We're committed to paying him $188.5 Million, counting this season.  Why am I reminded of Rime of the Ancient Mariner?

[Brock Beauchamp]

4 minutes ago, Robocaller said:

What I don't get is why don't they bat Yelich 2nd? Or first? His obp isn't bad, but he doesn't have any power anymore. Historically he's batted best 2nd in the order.

Modern baseball thought is that you actually put your best hitter second in the lineup, not third. So I guess where you put Yelich is really dependent on how you view both Yelich and Adames.

[young guns]

Plus they want to bat Wong first, so they want to split up the lefties.

[Ron Robinsons Beard]

Sure looked like we saw the good version last night.

He is hitting most everything hard, which is an improvement on last year. I have guarded optimism, and he's going to have bad days once in a while, like the Golden Sombrero over the weekend, but so far, Yelich has looked much closer to a legit middle-of-the-order bat than he hasn't this season. If he can start driving the ball more consistently, watch out.

[Brock Beauchamp]

2 minutes ago, Ron Robinsons Beard said:

Sure looked like we saw the good version last night.

He is hitting most everything hard, which is an improvement on last year. I have guarded optimism, and he's going to have bad days once in a while, like the Golden Sombrero over the weekend, but so far, Yelich has looked much closer to a legit middle-of-the-order bat than he hasn't this season. If he can start driving the ball more consistently, watch out.

The fact that he's both driving the ball and elevating it is promising. But it's still very early and I'm not confident in predicting what Yelich will look like in two weeks, much less two months.

[Ron Robinsons Beard]

3 minutes ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

The fact that he's both driving the ball and elevating it is promising. But it's still very early and I'm not confident in predicting what Yelich will look like in two weeks, much less two months.

Agreed. But as much as people are ragging on the negatives around here regarding Yelich, I think it's also appropriate to accentuate the positives. At the end of the day, this team's offense is going to be steered by Yelich. They've built the lineup around him. If he doesn't produce, it is going to be difficult for this team to compete. So when we catch a glimpse of vintage 2018/19 Yelich, like we did last night, it provides a lot of hope. 

[Brock Beauchamp]

16 minutes ago, Ron Robinsons Beard said:

Agreed. But as much as people are ragging on the negatives around here regarding Yelich, I think it's also appropriate to accentuate the positives. At the end of the day, this team's offense is going to be steered by Yelich. They've built the lineup around him. If he doesn't produce, it is going to be difficult for this team to compete. So when we catch a glimpse of vintage 2018/19 Yelich, like we did last night, it provides a lot of hope. 

The upside is that he is on track for far more extra base hits than he had in 2021.

The downside is that his launch angle is barely higher than 2021, which explains why almost all his hits have gone for extra bases. If he's not elevating and driving the ball this season, he's hitting it just like he did in 2021, which is weakly and/or on the ground.