Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Yelich’s elevation counted on
Team expects last summer’s power surge to continue for outfielder
PORT ST. LUCIE — Christian Yelich swears his power surge last summer wasn’t on purpose.
He didn’t make a concentrated effort or tweak his mechanics to hit more fly balls (which happened) or fewer ground balls (which also happened). Instead, he said, it was merely the culmination of years of work, of his continued learning of the league and himself, and the art of swinging the bat.
And the Marlins think there is more where that came from. They start 2017 expecting their center fielder to be at the center of them improving on one of the lowest-scoring offenses in baseball.
“It’s all angles. Hitting is angles,” manager Don Mattingly said. “It’s not so much increasing power. It’s learning how to hit and how to get to balls.
“As [Yelich] learns to get to different balls in different areas of the plate, if he gets there at the right angle, he’s going to get elevation, and he’s going to hit homers.”
A lot of Yelich’s 2016 gains stemmed from exactly that: covering more of the zone (middle-in specifically, Mattingly said) and getting more balls in the air, and, thus, more over the wall. It resulted in 21 homers (triple what he had the year before) and 98 RBIs (more than double his 2016 total).
As much as the Marlins have long believed Yelich’s power to be a matter of
when, not if, getting the ball off the ground has been a struggle since he broke into the majors in 2013.
In Yelich’s career, six of every 10 batted balls have been on the ground. That’s a high ground-ball rate. For context, consider that new Marlins reliever Brad Ziegler — a submarining ground-ball-producing machine — induced grounders at a 63.3 percent rate in 2016.
Last season, Yelich improved his fly-ball rate to 20 percent (up from 15 percent in 2015). He decreased his ground-ball rate to 56.5 percent (down from 62.5 percent in 2015).
The change was also evident month to month. Yelich nearly doubled his June fly-ball rate (15.6 percent) in September/October (29.9 percent). As he hit more balls in the air over the course of the second half, the home runs came. Yelich’s 14 homers after the All-Star break were double what he hit in all of 2015.
That wasn’t Yelich’s specific aim, however.
“I’ve never seen a ground ball go over the fence,” Yelich said. “No one wants to hit a 12-hopper to the second baseman. I get why people want the ball in the air.
“But I’ve heard some guys say they’re trying to lift everything and hit the bottom of the ball. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m not walking up to the plate thinking, I’m hitting the bottom of this ball. I’m trying to get it in the air.
“Everyone wants to become better. The thing I needed to do better was probably hit for more power. But you don’t want to actively try to do that. It has to come naturally.”
Frank Menechino, the Marlins’ assistant hitting coach, has helped Yelich try to coax out that natural power. Menechino is like Yelich in that he doesn’t talk in terms of ground-ball-tofly-ball ratio or launch angle or exit velocity; new-age lingo to describe age-old hitting philosophies. Menechino does talk in terms of sticking to one’s approach, trying to “barrel up” balls and the finer details of an individual’s swing.
“You take a guy into the cage and say, hey, your launch angle is a little bit [low], let’s try to get the launch angle: no, no, no,” Menechino said. “Let that ball get a little deeper. OK, it’s getting a little too deep on you, catch it more out front. That’s simple. We’re not mathematicians out here.”
As Yelich enters his age-25 season, a time at which most players are only beginning to enter their primes, he is continuing to work on all of the things that helped him make a jump last year. And if he can improve on, or even just maintain, his 2.28 grounder-to-fly-ball rate from the 2016 second half (as well as his abnormally high rate of nearly one home run for every four fly balls), there is another jump to be made.
Yelich is careful, though, not to develop a one-track mind about it, in part because he plays half his games at pitcher-friendly Marlins Park.
“One of the worst hitters’ parks in the league,” Yelich said. “Yeah, sure, your flyball-to-ground-ball ratio will be sick. You’ll have a great one. But your production isn’t going to be as awesome at home. I feel like there’s a fine line. You don’t want to be extreme.”