Christian Yelich turned out to be a perfect fit in Milwaukee
The Brewers have Derek Jeter to thank for all of this. Well, maybe not all of it, but let's face it, if Jeter hadn't decided to remake the Miami Marlins from scratch, the union between the city of Milwaukee and its newest sports hero, Christian Yelich, would never have happened.
It was less than a year ago that Yelich watched with disapproval as the other two-thirds of one of baseball's best outfields was traded away. First, Giancarlo Stanton was shipped to Jeter's old club, the New York Yankees. Three days later, Marcell Ozuna was dealt to the St. Louis Cardinals. The Yelich-Stanton-Ozuna troika had combined for 114 homers in 2017. Just like that, 96 of those homers were gone.
Initially, the Marlins got word out through the usual channels that Yelich wasn't necessarily going anywhere. After all, here was a pre-peak player with five years left on his contract for just $58 million, including a club option for the 2022 season. Yelich wasn't a star, but he was very good and very consistent, with WAR totals that were 3.6 or higher in each season from 2014 to 2017.
Rumors about Yelich swirled for the next six weeks or so until, finally, on Jan. 25, 2018, the Marlins' brain trust of Jeter and general manager Michael Hill reached an agreement with Milwaukee GM David Stearns to send Yelich to the Brewers for a package of prospects.
"There was a lot of stuff this offseason that was out of the norm. I had never really gone through something like this before," Yelich told reporters in a post-trade conference call. "I'm just excited for the fresh start and the new opportunity, and to be a part of the Brewers."
Yelich would never have predicted then, and would never admit it now, but he would not just become a part of the Brewers franchise. He would become the face of it.
First impressions
Yelich is a native of Thousand Oaks, California, so this has been a rough couple of weeks for him. Knowing what we know about Yelich at this point, the MVP award, which he is expected to win Thursday, is not going to take his mind off any of that, or at least it won't for very long.
For now, let's think back to January. Here you have a Southern California native who has spent his entire big league career in South Florida getting shipped to an old industrial city on the shores of icy Lake Michigan. The timing of the trade coincided with the start of Milwaukee's annual winter fan fest, which created a whirlwind experience for Yelich. On the day of the trade, the high temperature in Milwaukee was 36 degrees -- and that was unseasonably warm.
Then, at the fan fest, Yelich got a taste of Wisconsin hospitality and the anticipation around a Brewers club that made a Cinderella run in the 2017 postseason, only to fall one game short of the World Series.
"There was a lot of excitement there," Yelich told ESPN during spring training. "It was like three days after I got traded, so it happened fast. You could tell people are excited. So hopefully, we can play well and keep them excited."
Keeping them excited
The tone for the season may have been set in Yelich's first home series against National League Central rival St. Louis. In his first Milwaukee home game, Yelich went 0-for-4 in an 8-4 Cardinals win that was marked by an upper-deck home run hit by St. Louis pitcher Miles Mikolas.
The second game didn't start any better. The Cardinals began the game with back-to-back homers by Dexter Fowler and Tommy Pham. Two innings later, Yelich's old teammate Ozuna joined the long-ball party with a two-run shot to put St. Louis up 4-0.
But then we got a taste of what the Brewers would become. First, the Milwaukee bullpen strung together five shutout innings to give the offense a chance to chisel into the St. Louis advantage. Yelich's RBI single in the fifth got Milwaukee on the board. In the eighth, Yelich led off with a ground-rule double and scored the first of two Milwaukee runs in the inning, cutting the lead to 4-3.
Then the magic that would mark the Brewers' season showed up in the ninth. With two outs and nobody on, Yelich tied the score with a homer to dead center off St. Louis' Dominic Leone, sending the Miller Park crowd into a frenzy. He had barely made it back to the dugout when Braun took Leone's next pitch out to left to win the game.
Never before had a game begun with back-to-back homers and ended with back-to-back homers. We should have known then that something was up in Milwaukee.
"I still had my batting gloves on," Yelich said in the clubhouse. "I hadn't taken all my stuff off yet. I heard him hit it, I saw the ball just flying. I thought, 'There is no way he just did that.' What a way to end the game."
A nice half
In 2017, the Brewers moved into first place in May and hung on in that spot through the All-Star break. They won 11 of 13 prior to that point and led the Central by 5 1/2 games at the break. A week later, that lead had evaporated and the Brewers never got it back.
This season, the Brewers also seized first place in May, and after a 19-8 month, Milwaukee led the division by 4 1/2 games. That turned out to be the Brewers' biggest lead all season. This time around, the Brewers limped into the break on a five-game losing streak and had fallen out of the division lead.
As for Yelich, he had done just fine. He hit .292/.364/.459 with 11 homers, 43 RBIs, 60 runs and 12 stolen bases. It was almost exactly in line with his career numbers, save for a little boost in slugging that could be attributed to playing home games in a more hitter-friendly venue.
Nevertheless, there was nothing eye-popping about Yelich's season to that point. According to Fangraphs, he had compiled 2.2 WAR -- again, right around his career norm -- which ranked 24th in the National League, just behind Asdrubal Cabrera. He ranked third among Milwaukee's position players, behind Lorenzo Cain and Jesus Aguilar.
It was good enough to land Yelich his first All-Star Game selection. Along with Yelich, the Brewers also sent Aguilar, Cain and relievers Josh Hader and Jeremy Jeffress to Washington, D.C. Yelich homered off Houston's Charlie Morton in the game.
The night was also memorable for Hader, and for all the wrong reasons. First, he gave up three runs in the game. Then, after he exited the contest, Hader found out that some ugly tweets from his high school days had been unearthed. He apologized after the game, but the fallout was just beginning.
The Brewers returned home to begin the second half of the season against the Dodgers. The first day after the season resumed marked the first time that Hader had to address the local media, augmented by a number of national reporters on hand because of that incident and because it turned out to be the first game for newly acquired Dodger Manny Machado in an L.A. uniform. The Brewers reportedly had been one of Machado's chief pursuers.
One thing you have to understand about Yelich is that he does not like to talk about himself. Ask him about a teammate, you'll get a great and detailed response. Ask him about the team and you'll get more of the same. Ask him about the fans, he grows effusive. Ask him about Christian Yelich, and he turns into Bill Belichick.
That first night, when Hader had to come face-to-face with the consequences of his past transgressions, Yelich was among the most eloquent of those in the Milwaukee clubhouse, who, while supporting their teammate, did not necessarily give him a free pass.
"Everything I know about the guy and every interaction I've had with him, there has been no indication of anything like that," Yelich said. "It's something that has happened and needs to be addressed. The commentary in those tweets was tough, and where we're at today in our society is far past that. He understands that. He regrets it.
"As teammates, we acknowledge that it was wrong, but we want to support him because he's been there for us. Going forward, I think that's what we're going to do."
Yelich had three hits and three RBIs that night, extending a little surge in which he had gone 9-for-18 with four RBIs over four games. But the Brewers lost that first night to the Dodgers, extending their losing streak to six games. They had fallen three games out of first place. Given the Hader controversy, the losing streak and the perceived disappointment of not landing Machado, it appeared that Milwaukee's hopes were teetering.
In fact, Milwaukee's season was only getting started.
Hot as hot gets
That little surge for Yelich turned into one of the great half-seasons of baseball a player has enjoyed in years. After going 0-for-4 on July 13, Yelich's OPS stood at .811. From that point through the end of July, he hit .492/.515/.873. In 26 August games, he hit .307/.363/.667 with 11 homers. On Aug. 29, he went 6-for-6 and hit for the cycle for the first time in his career in a 13-12 win over Cincinnati.
For the season, Yelich's OPS was up to .937 by the end of August, and he had begun to be mentioned in early chatter about the NL MVP race. Questions about why things were happening and what they meant began to rain on him during clubhouse hours, and he deflected them with shrugs and short answers.
"I don't really look at numbers," Yelich told ESPN. "I couldn't tell you what my home-road stats are or anything like that."
The Brewers had been up and down during the first part of Yelich's torrid half and were in third place when August ended, four games back of the Cubs. The combination of Yelich's surge and the Brewers' water-treading led to an obvious question: What would happen if Yelich cooled off?
Because he had to cool off, right?
Stretch run
Well, of course Yelich kept right on hitting, and the Brewers eventually got as hot as he was. Milwaukee started September by going 9-3 and moving within 1 1/2 games of the Cubs. After losing to Pittsburgh on Sept. 22 to fall 2 1/2 games back, that was it. The Brewers did not lose again in the regular season.
Yelich propelled it all. On Sept. 17, he went 4-for-4 and hit for the cycle for the second time in less than a month. During Milwaukee's season-closing eight-game winning streak, Yelich hit .458 with 17 RBIs. He had three hits and drove in the first run of Milwaukee's 3-1 win over the Cubs in the division tiebreaker game, which gave the Brewers their first division crown since 2011.
During the second half, Yelich's 5.4 WAR led all NL position players. Second place was the Dodgers' Justin Turner -- at 3.4. Yelich hit .367/.449/.770 with 25 homers and 67 RBIs in 65 games. He ended up as the first batting champion in Brewers history, led the league in slugging percentage and finished two homers and one RBI shy of winning the league's first Triple Crown since 1937.
"He's probably been at the top end of what we had possibly expected him to be," Stearns said at one point during the stretch run.
It was as the Brewers' season was reaching its crescendo that Yelich penned his missive for the Players Tribune. In typical fashion, he led off by pointing the spotlight at Cain, writing, "Maybe I should be talking about myself here, but I don't know ... that's just not me."
Milwaukee's quest for its first pennant since 1982 ended one game short, with a 5-1 loss to the Dodgers in Game 7 of the National League Championship Series. Yelich struggled in that series, going just 5-for-28 with one home run. It wasn't quite the way he wanted his dream season to end, but that also means there is plenty of motivation for what lies ahead.
"I came to a team that was a game away from the playoffs," Yelich said. "My goal going in was to be the player that they traded for -- nothing more, nothing less -- and just contribute to what they already had going there. It was an unbelievable year, it was a lot of fun. And we came one game away from being in the World Series.
"I think we can take what we learned from this year and the feeling of disappointment we had of being so close, but not being able to get over the final hump, and use it as motivation going into next year. See if we can take that final step."
The perfect fit
The guy from the sun-splashed regions of America could not have been more enthusiastically embraced by the fans in Milwaukee and the general region of Brewers-loving fans. The Brewers, playing in baseball's smallest television market, averaged more than 35,000 fans per game at Miller Park.
"I've never seen anything like this town when it comes to people being nice," Yelich wrote in the Players Tribune. "For real. It's a stereotype about the Midwest, but it's true. It's pretty ridiculous how nice people are in Milwaukee. It's like you're a member of everyone's family or something."
Given Yelich's ridiculously team-friendly contract, it is highly likely that he'll be calling Milwaukee home for at least the next four years. If so, as he enters into the meat of his career, he could put up some tremendous numbers.
Part of it is the ballpark. Yelich entered 2018 with 59 career homers, but 41 of them had been hit away from Marlins Park. This season, he hit 22 homers at Miller Park during the regular season -- four more than he hit during his entire home career with Miami. Part of it is he's just a better player.
"It's definitely a little bit better place to hit," Yelich said after accepting the Hank Aaron Award as the NL's top hitter. "But I think really just learning yourself as a player. You're trying to improve every year. And you're trying to make improvements on what you learn about yourself, when you're successful or struggle. You try to minimize those stretches. And you realize what you do when you're successful and you try and lengthen those."
Now the struggle to lengthen those good stretches will extend to years as he enters the best part of his career on a contending team, in front of a rabid fan base, in a market that fits his personality and in a ballpark conducive to his skill set.
And, almost certainly, Yelich enters his prime with something that two other members of that seminal plane entourage from back in January also own. Like Yount and Braun, Yelich will be a Milwaukee Brewer with an MVP trophy. He deserves it.
There are team reasons that players win MVP awards, and Yelich will surely underscore those aspects of the honor. But it's not a team reward. It's a reward for the player who was the best at his craft in a given season. It's Yelich's award, even if he remains reluctant to give himself some credit.
Because like it or not, Christian, you've become a star. Like it or not, you've become the face of your franchise. Don't believe it? Well, up in Milwaukee this week, there is a special bus line running to commemorate the Brewer who dons uniform No. 22.
It's the No. 22 bus, which, until the MVP award is announced, is officially known as the Yelich line. They might as well make it permanent because Yelich's season was a ride no one in Milwaukee is going to forget anytime soon.
