The Cardinals keep pitching to Christian Yelich, and he keeps making them pay for it

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Mike Shildt joked before Tuesday's game against the Milwaukee Brewers at Miller Park that he's been getting suggestions from everyone – including the great-aunt he never knew he had – on how to pitch Christian Yelich.

If he wasn't listening, he might want to start after Yelich continued his torrid run against his St. Louis Cardinals with yet another home run, his third three-run shot in the last two games in the fifth inning that provided some breathing room en route to an 8-4 Brewers victory.

The homer was:

• Yelich's ninth of the season, tied for most in the National League and most on the Brewers.

• His eighth against the Cardinals this season, already the most by a Milwaukee player against St. Louis in a single season.

• Yelich's seventh in as many games with an at-bat against the Cardinals dating to last Sept. 25 at Busch Stadium (he walked in all five plate appearances the following day).

• And his 14th in 22 games against the Cardinals since joining the Brewers. Twelve of those have come in 16 games at Miller Park.

Yelich also has 10 runs batted in over the first two games of the series, already the most ever by a Brewers player in a single series against the Cardinals with Wednesday's matinee to go. Casey McGehee set the previous mark of nine in a three-game series at St. Louis in September of 2009.

BOX SCORE: Brewers 8, Cardinals 4

MLB: Live scoreboard, box scores, standings, statistics

He's also reached base 19 straight games against the Cardinals dating to last May 28. Over that span, Yelich is hitting .348 while posting a .483 on-base percentage and 1.468 OPS.

Not surprisingly, Shildt said after Tuesday's game that he might instruct his pitching staff to just stop pitching to him altogether much like they did in that Sept. 26 game last year.

"It is possible tomorrow? Absolutely. It is possible," he said. "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again. There is a fine line between giving the (Barry) Bonds treatment and appreciating the fact at some point you feel like it is going to end.

"We also want our guys to compete and execute. Right now against him, we are not consistently."

Shildt had joked after Monday's game that maybe Yelich was psychic with regard to how he'd been hitting everything against the Cardinals. The skipper then said before Tuesday's game he wasn't referring to Yelich possibly stealing signs.

He started off slowly in this one, singling in the first inning off Jack Flaherty and then flying out and striking out in the third as the Brewers scored five times. Homers by Lorenzo Cain and Yasmani Grandal were the highlights in that frame, along with a two-out, two-run double by starter Brandon Woodruff.

Yelich's next at-bat came in the fifth, and it came against right-hander Ryan Helsley, who was making his major-league debut. The count was 2-2 after Yelich fouled off a 99-mph fastball when Helsley put a cutter right over the heart of the plate.

As he's been doing game in and game out against the Cardinals, Yelich crushed it. When it landed, 427 feet away in the second deck in right-center, the Brewers' lead had been upped to 8-0.

“He had really good stuff," Yelich said. "I guess that was his debut, and we really didn’t’ have a whole lot of video on him or a lot to go on. You kind of had to feel it out.

"I kind of got lucky. I got deep enough into the at-bat where I saw some pitches and had a decent idea of what his stuff was like. But yeah, he had great stuff. He did a great job after that.”

Yelich then struck out in his final at-bat in the eighth against left-hander Tyler Webb, a one-time Brewer.

Is he surprised the Cardinals keep pitching to him, despite all the damage he's been doing?

“No. I mean, it’s baseball," he said. "I got out three times today, too. Struck out twice. That’s the game of baseball. You have to be ready to go and see how the game plays out.”

Cain's homer got the Brewers on the board in that third inning and Grandal has been arguably just as hot as Yelich – although without quite the overall damage – but Woodruff remains a big story offensively as well with how he continues to swing the bat.

After doubling as a pinch-hitter in Monday's win, his two-run double four batters after Grandal's homer gave him his fifth hit already on the season. His average sits at .714, and Milwaukee pitchers are now batting .367 with a major-league-leading 11 hits in all.

"Anytime you get to run the bases, that means something good’s happening," said Woodruff, who also turned in a solid 5 2/3-inning start to improve his record to 2-1. "Hopefully we get to do it a lot more."

For all the numbers he's put lately, Yelich said – with a smile – that he thinks Woodruff is even more locked in at the plate than he is right now.

"I looked up at the scoreboard and he’s hitting .870-something," said Yelich. "We sent him up as a pinch-hitter yesterday, he got a hit.

"It’s actually a big advantage when he can hit like that. You saw it tonight, he came through with a two-RBI double right there with a phenomenal slide into second. It’s great.

"He really is another weapon up there and it’s fun to watch, for sure.”