Christian Yelich Is BACK!
Christian Yelich has had a strange career. He's never been bad. In the early part of his career, he was a consistent, solid major league starter that fit in quite well in a lineup with good, young hitters like Giancarlo Stanton, Marcell Ozuna, and JT Realmuto (I still wonder what could've been with those Marlins teams.) He was an everyday guy, but then he got traded to the Brewers and went into God mode for two seasons. Seriously, for a brief period, Christian Yelich was one of the most feared hitters in all of baseball. Then, seemingly overnight, he wasn't. Yelich put up a strange slash line in 2020, reaching base at a .356 clip but only hitting .205, well below the .301 career average he had coming into the 2020 season. But the future away we get from 2020, the less serious it becomes. Even with 2020 being an anomaly, Yelich has never been able to recapture the magic that made him an MVP winner in 2018 and an MVP MVP runner-up in 2019. He may never return to that level, but Yelich is quietly putting together one of the best seasons of his career in 2023.
There's no real explanation for why Christian Yelich took a step back following the 2019 season. Many people pointed to the baseball's no longer being juiced, but Yelich's fly ball rate has been as consistent as it was when he was an MVP frontrunner. He hasn't suffered any significant injuries. He's been incredibly durable, having played 130 or more games in six of his first ten seasons. There's never been anything concerning about him. He just hasn't been as good. But he's started to find his groove in 2023. His batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage, OPS, and OPS+ are the highest since Yelich finished second for the MVP in 2019. His batted ball data is also spectacular. His average exit velocity, max exit velocity, and hard hit percentage are all in the 88th percentile or above. Also, while Yelich has always been more of an offensive-minded player, his defense has taken a significant step up in 2023. He currently ranks in the 84th percentile in outs above average, the highest of his career.
It's not like Yelich had some shocking downfall in which he went from a perennial MVP candidate to a bum overnight. But it seemed like he was just entering his prime when he won the NL MVP back in 2018, and he's rarely been able to recapture that form. He'll probably never get back to where he was, but he's putting up some solid numbers for a team that always seems to need offensive production. The Brewers seem to be good year in and year out, but there's always something about them that I find kind of boring. They're good, but they're always there. Could they win the NL Central? Absolutely. The Reds don't seem to be going anywhere, and the rest of the division is downright poor. But do I see them ever winning the World Series? No, not really. What made them intriguing for a few years there was Christian Yelich. For a brief second, the Brewers were a scrappy, small-market team that just happened to have a superstar in Yelich. He may never return to superstar status, but at age 31, he finds himself carrying the Brewers offense once again.
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