Christian Yelich is an amazing hitter, but at Miller Park he has become an absolute monster

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Those who play with Christian Yelich are having an increasingly difficult time coming up with new ways to describe what he is doing.

And it’s easy to see why. You don’t see hitters dominate opponents like this very often, especially the way Yelich is doing it at home.

“He’s impossibly good right now,” said Brewers teammate Ryan Braun. “He’s making something that’s incredibly difficult look really easy over a rally large sample size. We’re looking at a long period of time now. If you go back to the all-star break last year, it’s 3 ½ months of making something that’s incredibly difficult look really easy.

“For us, as teammates, you’re kind of shaking your head. I think all the opponents are kind of taking the same approach right now. What he is doing is incredibly impressive, incredibly difficult. And he’s made it look so easy for so long.”

At home, Yelich is making it look more than easy. He’s making it look fantasy league easy. Video game easy. In your dreams easy.

BOX SCORE:Brewers 5, Dodgers 0

HAUDRICOURT: Yelich taught Cardinals manager a tough lesson

MLB: Live scoreboard, box scores, standings, statistics

How easy? After hitting two more home runs Saturday night in the Brewers’ 5-0 victory at Miller Park, these are Yelich’s numbers in 13 home games: .435 batting average, 13 home runs, 29 runs batted in, 19 runs scored, 1.326 slugging percentage, 1.868 OPS.

The Brewers figured Yelich would prosper at Miller Park when they acquired him in a trade with Miami on Jan. 25, 2018 but he has done more than prosper. In 87 home games (85 starts), he has slugged an amazing 35 home runs.

When you consider those numbers, could you really blame Los Angeles manager Dave Roberts for having Yelich intentionally walked in the seventh inning with a runner on second and two out? Yes, it was lefty against lefty with Caleb Ferguson on the mound, and right-handed-hitting Ryan Braun was on deck, but Roberts already had watched Yelich blast two homers off lefty Hyun-Jin Ryu to give the Brewers a 2-0 lead.

“You look at what Yelich has done, how he’s swinging the bat, what he’d done tonight, the game is still in the balance in my opinion,” Roberts said of that strategy. “So, you look at a guy who’s done it before in Ryan Braun, who I have a ton of respect for. Fergie has weapons to get lefties, righties out.

“Just a guy who’s swinging the considerably hotter bat, you’ve got to take your chance with the other guy. We didn’t execute a pitch and Braun put a good swing on it.”

Yes, he did. Ferguson put a 0-1 fastball in the wrong place and Braun crushed it out to left-center for a three-run homer that broke open the game. Braun traditionally has hit lefties well but was in a 3-for-38 swoon when the Dodgers walked Yelich, so the move didn’t stun him.

“The way he’s swinging the bat, it doesn’t make sense not to walk him,” Braun said. “There’s probably very few guys playing the game today who wouldn’t even make teams hesitant to walk him. It obviously made sense in that situation.

“If you look at my career numbers, I’ve been obviously pretty good against lefties (.997 OPS). This year, I’ve been bad against everybody, and ‘Yeli’ has been impossibly good. The combination of those two things, it obviously made a lot of sense for them to do what they did. I don’t remember that (lefty vs. lefty) ever happening before though.”

Of the Dodgers putting him on to face Braun, Yelich said, “I always expect to hit. I don't really worry about not getting pitched to, or what's going to happen. I'm focused on the situation, the pitcher, my approach, what you want to accomplish up there, until I'm told otherwise.

“I feel pretty comfortable hitting here. We've played a lot of games at home, too, already. That's probably because we have a roof and it's pretty cold up here at the beginning of the year. It's not really a home/road thing. It's just a great hitters' park. It plays fair. It rewards a good approach.”

Braun’s home run was important, and what hitters do behind Yelich in the lineup going forward will be just as important. Because, if Yelich keeps hitting the ball like this, teams are going to continue to give him the “Barry Bonds treatment,” as it was known when that slugger terrorized enemy pitchers and regularly drew intentional walks.

“I expected him to get off to a good start and continue doing what he was doing last year, but this home stand has been absolutely incredible," manager Craig Counsell said. "It’s surpassing what we could draw up or imagine right now.”

This home stand indeed has been incredible for Yelich. In six games against St. Louis and Los Angeles, he has batted .455 (10 for 22) with eight home runs, 16 RBI, nine runs scored and a 2.084 OPS. And it all started with a personal on-field hitting session with coach Andy Haines on Monday afternoon after Yelich went hitless in his last eight at-bats last weekend at Dodger Stadium.

“Andy suggested we go out there and do what we do in the (hitting) cage on the field, just to switch it up,” Yelich said. “It’s probably not out of the ordinary. I definitely hit a lot longer than I usually would. For me, it’s a ‘feel’ thing. There’s things I want to feel and get squared away. I just needed to put in some work at the beginning of the home stand.”

That might go down as one of the best-timed extra hitting sessions of all time. But it didn’t hurt that the Brewers returned home to Miller Park, either, which has become one giant batting cage for Yelich.

“It’s getting to the point where it literally doesn’t make sense,” Braun said of Yelich’s production at home. “He’s hitting everything on the barrel. He’s almost never swinging and missing. He has huge power to all parts of the park, so he doesn’t have to pull the ball or anything like that.

“I think he has been great on the road as well. We haven’t played many road games this year. But what he is doing is so special, I don’t think the ballpark really matters too much.”

The numbers suggest otherwise. Yelich is dangerous in any ballpark. But at Miller Park, he’s an absolute monster.