Year-In-Review: Christian Yelich

Joe Gallina evaluates the 2020 fantasy baseball season for Milwaukee Brewers outfielder Christian Yelich to determine his outlook for next season.

After having won the NL MVP award in 2018, Christian Yelich was well on his way to potentially winning a second consecutive award in 2019. However, he broke his kneecap in September of that year and that put a premature end to his monster season.

There were some fantasy baseball managers who shied away from selecting Yelich in 2020 drafts. They worried that he’d have a tough time bouncing back from his season-ending injury. However, as per FantasyPros’ consensus ADP rankings which were last updated on July 22, 2020, on average, he was still being selected third overall in preseason drafts.

Based on his end-of-season stats, those cautious fantasy players might have been justified in worrying about Yelich’s potential fantasy production. He posted career lows in batting average (.205) and OBP (still a pretty good .356), and despite posting the lowest chase ever (20.3), he still struck out at the highest rate of his career (30.8). The 2020 baseball season was tough on just about every player, but more so for someone like Yelich who was rehabbing from a serious injury.

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Multiple Issues

The Brewers were slowly easing Yelich back into the swing of things just before MLB suspended traditional spring training on March 12^th, 2020. Yelich went from rehabbing his knee under the guidance of team trainers to rehabbing his knee via a Zoom call. It’s just not the same.

Once the regular season started on July 24^th Yelich got off to a horrific 3-for-34 start (.088) and was never able to dig himself out of that hole. What happened? Had Yelich reached his peak? The consensus among Brewers beat writers, coaches, and bloggers seems to be that Yelich’s slump was caused by “mental” and “mechanical” issues.

Perhaps the mental aspect explanation has some merit. Maybe his lack of aggressiveness at the plate contributed to his slump. He only swung at 45.5% of the pitches he saw last season, down significantly from his 59.5% career rate. His hesitance to swing at pitches could be a sign that he was conscious of and focusing on trying to cut back on his strikeouts.

Maybe he was overthinking his approach at the plate, or possibly he was simply pressing a bit too much. According to Baseball Savant, Yelich was even laying off of what are considered to be the juiciest pitches to hit. His Meatball Swing % of 66.1 was the lowest of his career.

Under the heading “well that’s 2020 for you”, there were some seemingly inexplicable trends that emerged with regards to Yelich’s performance at the plate last season. His .205 overall batting average is unusual in itself since he never batted below .284 in his big league career. Furthermore, he batted .293 against LHP and just .169 vs. RHP, which is extremely odd since he crushed righties with a .358 BAA and batted .277 against LHP in 2019.

As per brooksbaseball.net, he had no problems catching up to fastballs. Yelich batted .316 and slugged an impressive .702 against four-seamers last season. He struggled against all other pitch types, batting just .143 against any pitch that had some movement to it.

Courtesy brooksbaseball.net

Prior to the 2020 season, Yelich had a career BAA fastballs of .351 and a career batting average of .277 against all other pitches.

Courtesy brooksbaseball.net

His hard hit rate, fly ball rate (as reported by Fangraphs), and launch angle (as reported by Baseball Savant) all decreased this season as compared to 2019 however, he still hit his fair share of home runs last season. He hit 12 dingers in 58 games, and at that pace would have hit over 30 in a full season.

2021 Projection

There’s reason to be optimistic that Yelich will bounce back in 2021. To begin with, he should start the season fully healthy. He’ll be 19 months removed from his knee injury. Perhaps Yelich’s knee was bothering him more than he or the Brewers were letting on last season and that could have affected his swing. Maybe he needed those last couple of weeks of spring training in order to fully rehab his knee under the watchful eye of the Brewers training staff. If his knee was barking at him last season, it might explain why his per game stolen base rate dropped from 13.4 for his career to 6.8 in 2020.

He has a long track record of success, and even though he slumped his entire 2020 season away, he still posted above-average statistics when it came to Barrel % (12.1), Exit Velocity (94, which is the highest of his career), and wOBA (.343).

So, who is the real Christian Yelich? Is he the seven-year veteran who compiled a .301/.383/.492 triple slash or is he the guy who couldn’t get out of his own way last season? Hopefully for savvy fantasy baseball players like you and I, the “general public” will let him slide 2021 fantasy drafts.

So far it appears that fantasy players may be able to pick up Yelich at a slight discount in preseason fantasy baseball drafts. In TGFBI’s 2 Early Mock Drafts, Yelich had an ADP of 10.9. Yelich was the 14^th overall selection in Rotoballer’s Early 2021 Mock Draft. Both of those drafts took place in October 2020. Currently (as of 11/20/2020) Yelich has an ADP of 11.47 in National Fantasy Championship Leagues. If those trends continue, fantasy players are going to have a field day making their selections from the turn in snake drafts this season.

Yelich’s biggest obstacle this upcoming season may end up being a lack of talent surrounding him in the Brewers lineup, but hopefully the Brew Crew will work on fortifying their offense this offseason. Even if they don’t make too many changes, Yelich will almost certainly rebound from his hellish 2020 season.

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