Yelich puts bad year in rear-view mirror
Tenth in a 2021 Brewers position-by-position series.
Christian Yelich wasn’t about to offer up even the slightest excuse for how poorly he performed during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season.
“I thought I was pretty much allaround terrible. It just wasn’t good,” the Milwaukee Brewers star leftfielder said Friday in his first Zoom session with reporters this spring.
“But it is what it is. This is baseball. That stuff happens. You can’t change it now and you can’t do anything about it. Good or bad, what you did the previous year doesn’t matter because you can’t do anything about it.”
You certainly can’t do anything to change those results but you can do something to try to avoid a repeat, no matter how much Yelich’s offensive dip was related to a bizarre 60-game season in which vast COVID-19 protocols changed nearly everything about the way players prepared for games. The 2018 National League most valuable player and 2019 runner-up spent considerable time thinking about what went wrong, even traveling from his home in Los Angeles to Nashville to visit Brewers hitting coach Andy Haines in search of answers.
No coach is more familiar with what Yelich looks like when he’s going good than Haines, who first worked with him in the Miami Marlins’ farm system after the lanky left-handed hitter was selected in the first round of the 2010 draft.
“I don’t want to go too far into it but it’s cool for me to have a special relationship with Andy,” Yelich said. “I’ve known him for, what, probably 12 years now; he’s known me since I was 18 years old. I’ve known him for so long
and know him so well that we're in contact a lot. I'm able to talk to him, and I trust him.
“He has seen me in a lot of different stages in my career. He has seen me play really well. We've been through a lot together. So, I had no hesitation really; I really wanted to go out there. It's a different environment. You can really just take your time and do whatever. I thought it was a productive trip.”
Yelich, 29, certainly had a lot to digest after a frustrating two-month season in which he batted .205 with a .356 onbase percentage, .430 slugging percentage, .786 OPS, 111 OPS+, 12 home runs, 22 RBI and 76 strikeouts in 200 at-bats (career-worst 30.8% strikeout rate).
Compare those numbers to his 2019 production – granted, over a normal, full season – when Yelich led the NL with a .329 batting average, .429 OBP, .671 slugging, 1.100 OPS and 179 OPS+.
It certainly didn't help that Yelich staggered to a 1-for-27 start with 12 strikeouts, digging a massive hole without the usual six months to get things squared away. Without going into details, Yelich indicated he understood what went haywire beyond the unprecedented environment.
“After looking back on it and kind of understanding it, I have a feeling of kind of what happened and, hopefully, am able to turn that around this year,” he said.
“I don't really want to get too into it or go too deep into why. I feel like I know and have a handle on it and some other people do as well. But it is what it is. You can't change it. It happened.”
It didn't help that Yelich hit in the worst luck of his career when he did put the ball in play. He had a hard-hit rate of 55.6% (balls hit with an exit velocity of 95 mph or higher) yet a batting average when putting the ball in play of only .259, down almost 100 points from the previous season (.355), according to FanGraphs.
But Yelich was uncharacteristically passive at the plate as well. According to Baseball Info Solutions, his swing rate dropped from a career high of 45.2% in 2019 to a career-low 34.6% last season. As a result, he walked 18.6% of the time,
Milwaukee Brewers left fielder Christian Yelich is trying to bounce back from a year where he hit just .205 with 12 homers and 22 RBI.
by far the highest rate of his career.
“Baseball, you know, it's just a weird game,” Yelich said. “You take a sample – 60 games – and that stuff can happen. It's just sometimes you hit the ball hard and they catch it and they are standing there. Sometimes, you don't hit it hard and nobody's there.
“That's always been the game of baseball, will always continue to be the game of baseball. Some years you are really lucky. Some year's you're not. But there's a lot of factors that really went into it.”
Some wondered if Yelich might have suffered more than others from having no fans in the stands. He definitely fed off the energy of home crowds at thenMiller Park during his first two seasons with the Brewers, posting OPS figures of 1.061 and 1.201, respectively.
“I'm not going to say that not having fans affected my performance last year,” he said. “I'm not going to say if we would have had fans, I could have played good. Or if we didn't have a pandemic, I would have played good. It is what it is. Guys played well last year. It's not an excuse.
“But I'm definitely glad to have (fans) back (even in limited capacity). We missed them, especially at Miller Park. It makes that a big home-field advantage and something we miss as a group. Fans create the atmosphere. I think we're all looking forward to having them back in whatever capacity that it starts out as, and then hopefully gradually increase that as we return to a normal world.”
Yelich spent the early part of the previous offseason rehabbing after breaking his right kneecap in early September 2019. So, even with pandemic restrictions, he felt his preparation for this spring was closer to normal. And, after playing through MLB's vast protocols last season, Yelich said they don't feel so foreign the second time around.
“Honestly, it feels pretty normal,” he said. “Aside from the mask-wearing and all that, it still has a normal feel to it. Much more normal than summer camp felt (in 2020) and even the season. Maybe that's just because we're kind of used to the protocols and how everyday life works. It's been a pretty good vibe. I think we're all excited about that.
“We were pretty much in the middle of the pandemic so I don't know if there's too much from last year that applies to this year other than we've been through these experiences. It's not going be as much of a shock. Whatever routine you had last year pretty much got thrown out the window.
“Now you kind of come into the new year with a better understanding of what's ahead of you and how you have to deal with it. It's a fresh start, it's a new year.”
A lot has happened – much of it bad – since spring training 2020, when Yelich and the Brewers made a huge commitment to each other with a nine-year, $215 million contract extension. Yelich is known for finding motivation, real or imagined, to provide a spark entering a new season but said his struggles of last year won't be used in that fashion.
“I feel like you need to be motivated every year,” he said. “If you're not motivated, stay at home, kind of, in my opinion. A major league season requires so much out of you. It asks for a lot. And you have to give the game a lot and if you're not willing to meet the game at that level, it's not going to go well for you.
“So, like I said, previous seasons are irrelevant in my opinion. And they have no bearing on what you need to do in the future. Every year is a fresh start."
With that fresh start comes a fresh perspective. No matter how many factors contributed to his subpar 2020 season, Yelich knows nobody wants to hear it.
“Whether you were the MVP the previous year or you sucked, everybody starts at zero in spring training and the new year,” he said. “We live in a business where it's ‘What have you done for me lately?' What I've done lately is play terribly, so I'm looking forward to a fresh start and starting a new year.”