CasWell Informed: Breaking Down Christian Yelich

Two time All-Star, Christian Yelich has had a highly documented fall from grace from his 2018 N.L. MVP-winning season and 2019, where he came runner-up in the N.L. MVP race to Cody Bellinger. The Californian born in December 1991, making him 30 years old, earned many accolades from pundits in his first two years before injuries seemingly derailed his career, cutting short his monster 2019 season. He definitely did enough to sign a huge contract before the start of the 2020 season, but has not lived up to it.

Hello! Welcome to a new series where I, Caswell,  go through the nerdy stuff to try to make it a little more simple so others can be more Well Informed with the statistics. We are going to go through how a player compares to themselves over previous years, against the rest of the team and league for that year, and maybe even get some historical comparisons. 

So is he still falling? Are things back on track? Should fans shun him? Let’s find out

Before Milwaukee
Before joining the Brewers, Yelich wasn’t the star the Brewers saw his first two years in Milwaukee, but he was still very good. He never hit lower than 0.282 in his five seasons in Miami, launching 21 and 18 home runs in his last two years before the switch. Yelich consistently showed a great bat, along with a keen eye, walking 300 times in the five years in Florida.

This culminated into a great OPS+ each season. OPS+ uses the players regular OPS, which is on-base plus slugging, and normalizes it across the entire league, while also adjusting for additional factors such as the ballpark played. The average OPS+ is 100, so a player who earns an OPS that is 10% better than league average will get an OPS+ of 110, without taking into account external factors.

The above graph shows that he was above average every single year as a Marlin, so far as to get an OPS+ of 135 in 2016.

WAR, which stands for Wins Above Replacement, is a lot of math which comes out to the number of wins a particular player gets for their team instead of a “replacement level player,” which is defined by Major League Baseball as a minor league replacement or available fill-in free agent. (If you want to read more about this very interesting statistic, Baseball Reference does a great job at explaining it further.) It is a counting statistic, such that it will culminate over the entirety of a player’s career. Despite this, it is earned throughout the entirety of the season, so one’s WAR can be found for just one year.

WAR less than 0 means that a team is better off with a replacement. Commonly, WAR between 0-2 would be considered a bench player, while anything above that is considered a starter. Typically, when a player has a WAR above 5, they are All-Star worthy, and above 8 is MVP worthy.

Yelich’s WAR over his 5 seasons with Miami, he was a 17.6 WAR player, getting as much as 4.9 WAR in 2016, which is the year he got his first Silver Slugger Award. He also only played 62 games in 2013, but still got 1.6 WAR as a rookie. 

He was definitely a good player as a Marlin, but his first two years in Milwaukee were down-right fantastic, winning his second and third Silver Slugger Awards, and placing first and second in MVP voting in the N.L. back to back.

First Two Years in Milwaukee 
In the trade that brought Yelich to Milwaukee, the Brewers sent a haul of prospects, including highly ranked prospect, Lewis Brinson, along with Isan Diaz, Monte Harrison, and Jordan Yamamoto, fans weren’t too sure what they were going to get. He was definitely a good player as a Marlin, but Lewis Brinson was thought to have a very bright future, ranking in the top 20 of all prospects for over two years. Nonetheless, Yelich’s output in his first two years in Milwaukee were down-right fantastic, winning his second and third Silver Slugger Awards, and placing first and second in MVP voting in the N.L. back to back and silencing the critics.

As such, I will just let the numbers speak for themselves by comparing him to some all-time greats and their 162 game average as calculated by Baseball Reference. The current generation is represented by Mike Trout, a player who is already being considered the greatest player of all time. Ty Cobb, the pure greatest hitter of all-time, is used. Finally, Henry Aaron, a Milwaukee baseball hero will end the comparison.

Despite playing in 147 games in 2018 and 130 games in 2019, Yelich is still close in all counting statistics among the 162 game average for the legends of the game selected in this comparison. His 44 home runs in 2019 is at the top of the list. He has the second and third highest batting average and has the highest and third highest OPS. 2018 Yelich is three RBIs behind Henry Aaron in RBI, and second in totals hits behind Ty Cobb. 

He was quite frankly, fantastic. Christian earned 7.3 WAR in 2018 and 7 in 2019, his first two years in Milwaukee, ranking among the leaders in most statistics.

Yelich’s Fall 
Yelich only played in 130 games in 2019, which is a result of a season ending broken kneecap he sustained in September of 2019. In that offseason, Yelich signed a 7 year, $188.5M contract extension, keeping him in Milwaukee until 2028, which also includes a mutual option for 2029. This seemed like an absolute bargain at the time due to his incredible play and being a fan favorite, marking him a Brewer for likely the rest of his career.

The morale surrounding this deal would come crashing down as struggles persisted. In the COVID shortened year, he played 58 of the 60 games yielded a batting average of 0.205, down from 0.326 and 0.329 in his first two years. His on-base percentage slid to 0.356 with an OPS+ of only 110. He hit 12 big flies and had 22 RBIs. There was concern, but it wasn’t massive, as there were substantial abnormalities that year and many players struggled.

Injuries plagued his 2021 season, in which he had three different stints on the injured list with a lower back strain. He spent 20 days in the INjured List, came off for a day, before going back on for another 15 days. The third was a 12-day stint on the COVID-19 IL. This back issue is one that first came up while in the Marlins’ farm system and early years in Miami. Yelich only played in 117 games in the full season. His batting average improved to 0.248, but his OBP only improved marginally to 0.362 and his power numbers truly tanked, hitting only 9 home runs on the year. This resulted in the lowest OPS of his career, at 0.736 and an OPS+ of 99, meaning he was an ever-so-slightly below average batter that year. 

Alarmingly, he went from an MVP caliber player, to a borderline bench player, in terms of WAR.

What Changed?
The stats clearly took a plunge, but what else varied in his second two years as a Brewer compared to his first? The first thing to look at is his strikeout percentage and his walk percentage each year.

We can see that his strikeout rate went up significantly, and his walk rate went up as well, with a significant jump in 2020 which can be attributed to the COVID year and his stellar 2019. Typically, the average strikeout and walk rates across the MLB sit around 20% and 8%, respectively. This means Yelich’s strikeout rate is fine and he walks well. The bump in the later two years is significant, but would not impact his overall statistics that much

The approach at the plate of Yelich seems to have changed after his first two years, as he was a center to pull hitter, which is seen above, but highlighted below. Meanwhile, the 2020 season showed a much more consistent approach, with hot zones to the opposite field and on the pull side of center, with the latter showing a glimpse of the old Yeli. 2021 appears to be going back to the old, but clearly shows a more even approach, skewing to the opposite field a lot more. Typically this would show improvement at the plate, but does not apply to Yelich, as most of his success comes from pulling the ball, or going towards center.

Another very important thing is where he is missing the ball. The following four graphics are Whiff %, which is swing and miss strikes per swing, over the four years show that they increase and expand. 
 

Whiff %: Christian Yelich

The K% shows similarities to above, as the rates expand and increase in the second year of two years.

In addition to that, he wasn’t hitting the ball as well as often despite having a decent hard hit percentage. This is explicitly seen in the barrel per plate appearance stat, as it was an elite rate in the first two years, but slunk down to MLB average levels, which is denoted as the dashed line.

`So what about now?

To start, he is pulling the ball much more again, which is a good sign for Yelich.

The minor issue, however, is still the strikeout rate, as it sits at 25.2%, which is 1.4% higher than last year’s mark of 23.8%, but 5.6% down from 2020’s dreadful 30.8% strikeout rate. Despite this, his zonal strikeout percent looks significantly better, as inside pitches are no longer as much of an issue. 

His K% on the outside of the zone is still quite high, but is less severe than in 2020-2021, and he has reintroduced more low strikeout zones, which allows him to look for pitches better, as many pitchers will look to avoid those areas on an at bat where they are looking for a strikeout. 

When considering these strikeout percent numbers, it is important to look at the swing rate, as well as the whiff rate in these areas.

From this data, we can see that his swing and misses in the strike zone are quite slim, while he is swinging at most of the pitches inside the strike zone. This is evident by his 64.3% zone swing percentage (66.9%), which is actually lower than league average, but his 83.2% zone contact percentage is higher than league average (82.0%).

This works well for him, as his chase rate is 20.2%, which is the rate pitches outside of the zone are swung at, is significantly less than league average (28.3%). This shows that pitchers have to look for other ways to get him out, especially considering his contact percentage on all swings is 76.1%

The other way pitchers have to get him out for the most part is via the ground ball, which is how he hits the ball 55.9% of the time. The league average is 45.0%, meaning Yelich puts the ball on the ground more than 10% more than average! It may be surprising, but his career average is at 54.8%.

A more telling metric however is the ratio of ground outs to air outs compared to his ratio of ground balls to fly balls. His GO:AO is 1.52, but his GB:FB is only 1.24. This means that when he hits the ball, he is significantly more likely to record an out than if he is to hit the ball on the ground. This is not just because the fly balls hit are gone for home runs however, as only 10.0% of balls hit in the air leave the park. This is down a lot from his numbers in 2018 and 2019, which were 22.2% and 20.7%, respectively. 

The most important thing about this trend, however, is what this means for his hitting, which is the major concern. His hit rate, which is the total hits per total at bats is down to 24.23%, which was up to as high as 32.58% in 2018, and 32.92% in 2019. He is hitting a home run 2.4% of the time, down from 5.5% in 2018 and 7.6% in 2019. 

Is Yelich Done For? 
The pure numbers don’t look great, I’ll admit it, but I still believe in Christian Yelich, and so should you.

His barrel per plate appearance is up to 6.9 and at lead-off he is starting to tear it up, hitting 0.298 when first in the lineup, with an OBP of 0.353. His slugging is only at 0.426, leading to an OPS of 0.779 in this spot. This is better than the 0.703 OPS across the entire league, but I think his can go higher yet than what we have seen from him at the top of the order. 

This is in large part due to his lack of line drives he has hit, which is only at 16.8%, down from his career average of 25.5%. His hard hit rate is good, at 50.8% and even better, his sweet spot rate, which is the rate in which the idealized combination of launch angle and exit velocity, is at 31.8%. His line drive rate is just suboptimal. 

Not just this, but teams have begun to utilize a pitch, which he cannot seem to square up. This is the changeup, which is being hit hard only 36.8% of the time, and is only garnering a paltry 0.103 batting average off of. In fact, all of his off speed hitting is slightly down. 

The good thing about this though, is that he is absolutely destroying fastballs, and overall, his numbers should be quite a bit better. His expected weighted batting average is 0.310 and he is in the top 10% in the league in hard hit rate, he just needs to start hitting those off-speed pitches again and put the ball on a line.

Christian Yelich might not be the best in the league, but he will be good, once a few things change.

So what would you like for me to analyze next time on CasWell Informed? It could be anything baseball related! Let me know in the comments and I'll keep an eye out! Thank you for reading!