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

[MVP2110]

 

[Brock Beauchamp]

4 minutes ago, MVP2110 said:

Which will move first: Yelich's high xwOBA or his 3.1 deg launch angle? They won't exist together for long.

And frankly, I have no idea which one is more accurate and which will change.

[TURBO]

Let's just hope he goes on a tear the next couple of weeks and starts feeling it again!

[Joseph Zarr]

On 4/14/2022 at 7:57 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.

I lived in Minneapolis/St. Paul during Mauer's prime. I agree with this sentiment 100% tho, if I recall correctly, Mauer never had an offensive season the caliber of Yelich's MVP season(s)? I could be wrong here...But, Mauer certainly was oft-injured if memory serves.

[Brock Beauchamp]

4 minutes ago, Julio Muchacho said:

I lived in Minneapolis/St. Paul during Mauer's prime. I agree with this sentiment 100% tho, if I recall correctly, Mauer never had an offensive season the caliber of Yelich's MVP season(s)? I could be wrong here...But, Mauer certainly was oft-injured if memory serves.

Mauer's 2009 season was basically as good as anything Yelich has done, though Yelich has two of those seasons. Mauer led the league in every triple slash category that season and did it while playing most of his games at catcher.

[Joseph Zarr]

13 minutes ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

Mauer's 2009 season was basically as good as anything Yelich has done, though Yelich has two of those seasons. Mauer led the league in every triple slash category that season and did it while playing most of his games at catcher.

Thanks for that heads up. Thinking back, I had moved to SW Wisconsin in 2008 and then Southern Tennessee most of 2009 before heading to New Mexico in the great Southwest. I've literally farmed alllllll over. I was a wee out of touch then and, well, it seems like I certainly missed his best baseball season! Those Twins teams with Morneau, Mauer, Hunter, Cuddyer et al. Man, those were fun teams.

[BallFour]

1 hour ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

Which will move first: Yelich's high xwOBA or his 3.1 deg launch angle? They won't exist together for long.

And frankly, I have no idea which one is more accurate and which will change.

Rather have him focus on hitting the ball hard then worrying about launch angle to start the year after the past two seasons.

[Cool Hand Lucroy]

34 minutes ago, Julio Muchacho said:

I lived in Minneapolis/St. Paul during Mauer's prime. I agree with this sentiment 100% tho, if I recall correctly, Mauer never had an offensive season the caliber of Yelich's MVP season(s)? I could be wrong here...But, Mauer certainly was oft-injured if memory serves.

Mauer's 2009 season netted a 172 OPS+, an MVP, and 7.7 oWAR (BRef). In 2018-2019, Yelich posted back-to-back 164 and 179 OPS+ marks, with 7.3 oWAR both years. For their careers, Yelich is currently at 132 OPS+ vs. Mauer's 124.

It's an interesting comparison. Mauer's MVP season featured 109 games at catcher, so that's gotta be considered. Mauer hit 140 in OPS 5 times in his career--his worst mark was 98 (Yelich's is currently 99). 

A lot of the gripes about Mauer I can recall from my time in the TC revolved around 1) the injuries you mention and 2) the size of the contract as an impediment to other parts of the Twins' roster.

As I look into this, there are some eerie similarities. Mauer hit 28 HRs in his MVP year and never got half that for the rest of his career. Yeli's hit 80 HR between 2018 and 2019. He's at 81 in all other years total, including yesterday's grand slam. The biggest difference is that Yelich posted two dominant years instead of one, and Mauer played a premium defensive position for 6-7 years.

It's weird, but I think Yelich's legacy in Milwaukee will depend on the team as a whole. Nobody's going to care about his contract if he puts up a 120 OPS and the Brewers' pitching leads the team to a World Series. I think the subset of anti-Mauer Twins' fans would've thought differently had they been able to turn all those division titles into pennants. Probably unfair, especially since Mauer is a more-likely-than-not HOFer at the end of the day (though the batting metrics are honestly a little underwhelming by Hall standards), but that's the game.

I'll say this. I think Yelich is a more dangerous offensive player and by a reasonably clear margin. For the last 5 years of his career, Mauer's OPS+ was like 105 at 1B/DH. In 2020, Yelich was at 110 in 58 games. I doubt Yelich gets to 170 again, but if the guy hits for any power at all, his walk rate and high OBP are going to push him into really good offensive territory.

 

[KeithStone53151]

I was putzing through Yelich statcast data and found something interesting and yet super ridiculous at the same time. Yelich had his worst 2 chase rates of his entire career in 2018 and 2019...his MVP years. The plate discipline section has some interesting stuff. His chase rate this year is by far the best of his career so far, but his chase contact percentage is far worse than at any other point of his career. In 2018/2019 it was upper 50s and so far this year it's only 22 percent. The majority of his plate discipline trends are good so far, but the chase contact jumped out at me as glaringly horrendous. It's also hard to say "he needs to focus more on making contact on crap pitches out of the zone". Chasing less is just so much better and he's doing that.

[Eye Black]

3 hours ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

Which will move first: Yelich's high xwOBA or his 3.1 deg launch angle? They won't exist together for long.

And frankly, I have no idea which one is more accurate and which will change.

Yelich's 2022 expected batting stats per Statcast are by far the best on the team:

Rk.	Player		PA	Pos	BIP	BA	xBA	Diff	SLG	xSLG	Diff	wOBA	xwOBA	Diff
1	Yelich, Christian		43	LF	22	.242	.282	-0.040	.455	.565	-0.110	.380	.416	-0.036

 

The only thing giving me pause a little bit is that expected stats across the entire league are currently under performing actual stats by quite a bit (BA by -0.020; SLG by -0.068, wOBA by -0.025). I assume that's due to a combination of possible factors including weather, humidors in all parks, as well as MLB presumably only using one type of baseball this year (the deadened one) instead of the two different baseballs they used last season.

Still, Yelich has significantly under performed his expected stats even if you take into consideration the league wide gap, especially his Expected Slugging.

Even if you look at Yelich's actual line right now, .242 BA / .455 SLG / .380 wOBA, that would still be a massive upgrade over his performance last year. If the expected stats are unto something and he ends up with a >.500 SLG coupled with a high OBP then he'll provide enough to be the impact bat they need to him to be. 

[tmwiese55]

58 minutes ago, KeithStone53151 said:

I was putzing through Yelich statcast data and found something interesting and yet super ridiculous at the same time. Yelich had his worst 2 chase rates of his entire career in 2018 and 2019...his MVP years. The plate discipline section has some interesting stuff. His chase rate this year is by far the best of his career so far, but his chase contact percentage is far worse than at any other point of his career. In 2018/2019 it was upper 50s and so far this year it's only 22 percent. The majority of his plate discipline trends are good so far, but the chase contact jumped out at me as glaringly horrendous. It's also hard to say "he needs to focus more on making contact on crap pitches out of the zone". Chasing less is just so much better and he's doing that.

Generally true and of course it's impossible to tell someone to 'chase more'.   But, there is a level of being aggressive that seems to be gone the last few years.  To me some of the most frustrating parts of watching the last couple years is it seems he predetermines not to swing at so many pitches. He just stands there bat on the shoulder with no movement as a pitch cruises down he middle for a strike.    Then, he's stuck with 2 strikes and often swings at a curve off the plate to SO.   So while yes of course you can't tell someone to chase, there is level of being aggressive to try and do damage that seems lacking.  This kind of goes back to the Joey Votto debate of years and years a bit.    Either way, after the rough weekend hopefully last night was a step in the right direction. 

[Fear The Chorizo]

I took some time to look at a few of Yelich's swings in August/September 2021 compared to his swings last night.  A couple things jumped out...

1 - his setup is quite similar in his stance, but it does seem like he eases himself into his crouch with his leg kick much more efficiently and in better balance this year compared to late last season - his 2021 swing almost looked like his his back leg collapsed into his crouch while his swings last night looked much more like he was loading up and lowering that leg.

2 - Yelich's lower half looks much more solid/athletic through the swing this season than what I was seeing in some of those late summer 2021 swings - this could be a combination of health-related factors with Yelich's back feeling better and having more confidence in being able to torque on his front leg (the one he injured his knee on back in 2019).

Something to definitely continue monitoring - regardless of launch angle, hitting the ball hard at the MLB level requires explosion through the lower half during the swing.  If Yelich keeps up with the high exit velo' when making contact it at least indicates he's using his whole body to hit the baseball and is feeling better at the plate than he was during most of the last two seasons.

[owbc]

One of these is Christian Yelich and the other is Vladimir Guerrero Jr...

[Brock Beauchamp]

35 minutes ago, owbc said:

One of these is Christian Yelich and the other is Vladimir Guerrero Jr...

There's a bit more to it than that and I wrote an article about it earlier today (largely based on how this thread had played out and my interpretations of it).

 

[zurch1818]

 

A majority of his hits are only on one side of the diamond. I'm afraid the current Yelich is still the new Yelich.

I can remember that double against the Cubs in the opening series.

[Brewcrew82]

Christian Yelich currently has an XSLG of .536. That surpasses anything he produced with the Marlins and is only about 30 points short of his 2018 MVP campaign. With the way he has been scalding the ball lately (and pretty much the whole year, actually), I think we're getting very close to Marlins/pre-All Star break 2018 Yelich. Let's wait and see how he does on this roadtrip, but it can't be overstated how huge such a development would be for this team. 

[homer]

launch angle is over 9 ?

[Brock Beauchamp]

12 hours ago, homer said:

launch angle is over 9 ?

Almost double digits!

[homer]

4 hours ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

Almost double digits!

So close!

[Brewcrew82]

10 minutes ago, homer said:

So close!

Just saw today's update. Wow! Look at that...Launch Angle, Exit Velocity, Max EV, XSLG, and HardHit% all at or exceeding his 2018 MVP levels. Don't you be teasing me now, Yeli!