With Spring coming to a close and Summer on the horizon, I took it upon myself to check out Christian Yelich so far this season. As we all know, Christian Yelich is the offensive centerpiece of the franchise regardless of his performance.
So far, he’s having a worse season than last year, tied for the worst of his career with his 2020 season by advanced metrics. Christian Yelich wasn’t even the best outfielder for the Brewers last season.
While his performance has not met expectations this season, he has not been a useless player. Yelich still bats third in the lineup and gets on base regularly, and there have been times since his MVP season that We Thought Yeli was Back but wasn’t.
So what is holding back #22 from breaking out of his long-lasting slump? We all want our face of the franchise to succeed, and that comes down to his strikeouts. In 197 AB, he has 58 strikeouts. That is tied for 15th most in baseball. This has been his biggest weakness since the shortened 2020 season. You would think at some point he would snap out of it, but we have yet to see it. I guess you could say he needs more Summer lovin’.
Perhaps Yelich’s best suit is his ability to produce in clutch situations. He’s batting .282 with RISP with a 1.038 OPS. As well as .333 with RISP and 2 outs and his OPS 1.157. He’s always been productive in this category.
If you want to take it a step deeper, Yelich best produces on these at-bat counts:
.333 BA on 0-1 Count
.357 BA on 1-0 Count
.300 BA on 1-1 Count
.364 BA on 2-1 Count
.333 BA on 3-1 Count
Additional stats can be found at Baseball-Reference.
As you can see from the data above, Christian Yelich does his best after taking a pitch or having the count in his favor. Let’s hope he can keep a level of confidence as he deepens into strike counts. As Summer approaches, let’s hope for a resurgence from our MVP and the star centerpiece of our offense.
AUTHOR: MARK MUSGRAVE III
Markie began writing for Wisconsin Sports Heroics in January 2022. He has a passion for all aspects of baseball as well as watching the Brewers and Detroit Tigers. Outside of Sports, he enjoys singing in choirs, watching/listening to Musicals, Bowling with his College team, and spending quality time with his family.
