Christian Yelich's October Surge Gives the Brewers Another Reason to Believe

MILWAUKEE — There is a story that dates from August 2010, when a skinny, 18-year-old first-round pick showed up in the Florida Marlins clubhouse, that stands 16 years later as a testament to his resolve and reliability. The older Marlins players teased Christian Yelich, who was shown around Sun Life Stadium after agreeing to terms five minutes before the signing deadline.

“Speech! Speech!” they shouted, aware of the youngster’s awkwardness.

“He was a little nervous,” manager Edwin Rodriguez said.

The lasting moment of the night, however, was when Yelich combed through some bats in the clubhouse to figure out what he was going to swing in the Gulf Coast League, his first stop in professional baseball. Yelich had used only a metal bat in high school in Westlake Village, Calif. He swung a wood bat only in a rare scouts’ league game.

“They gave me three or four bats to take back,” Yelich said. “I was trying to find one that was most like my metal bat. Kind of traditional knob, not a big taper to the barrel ... And so, one of them was the one I liked the most.”

The bat was a Louisville Slugger S318, a model first crafted for former outfielder Reggie Smith, signifying the first letter of his last name and the 318th player to request a new model bat.

Since then, from the Gulf Coast League to the majors to the World Baseball Classic to the postseason, Yelich has taken 9,121 plate appearances. For every one of them he has walked to plate with an S318.

“A lot of guys will change,” he said. “I guess sticking with the same one makes it easy for me. I always know what to expect.”

Like his S318, Yelich is a known quality. Yelich a 2018 MVP, a ’19 MVP runner-up, a three-time All-Star, a two-time batting champion and a Gold Glove winner. For nine years he has been Mr. Reliable for the Brewers—until this year, his first below average season in his 14 years in the big leagues. He fell hard. The designated hitter batted .235 with 12 home runs.

But something has changed this postseason. Yelich is hitting the ball hard again. He is spraying line drives all over the field. His average exit velocity this postseason is 96.7 mph, the hardest for any month in his career except October of 2021. He hit .357 against San Diego in the NLDS, the best of his eight career postseason series.

He has hit seven balls at least 102 mph in four playoff games—as many as he had in September. Only Manny Machado (eight in six games) has waffled more balls 102 mph or more this postseason than Yelich.

“He’s not quite there, but he’s close to being the Yeli of 2018 and 2019 as we’ve seen in a while,” teammate Brandon Woodruff says.

Two months from turning 35, and just when the young Brewers need him most, Yelich is having a renaissance.

Entering the National League championship series, which starts tonight, sometimes it seems the Brewers launch more narratives than home runs. There is Jacob Misiorowski re-writing the laws of baseball physics; the charming crustiness of manager Pat Murphy, everybody’s goofy uncle who pulls quarters out of the ears of nieces and nephews at the Thanksgiving dinner table; the whole “small ball” shorthand to describe their collegiate style; the one-sided postseason rivalry with the Dodgers; and the second-longest active World Series championship drought by any city (64 seasons of Milwaukee baseball, dating to the 1957 Braves, topped only by the wait for Clevelanders).

Not to be missed in all the fuss is this: Yelich has a chance to go to the World Series for the first time. Only four active players have logged more than Yelich’s 1,734 games without getting to the Fall Classic: Mike Trout, Paul Goldschmidt, Nolan Arenado and Eugenio Suarez. Once again, the Dodgers stand in his way. Los Angeles has ended the season for Yelich and the Brewers three times: the 2018 NLCS, 2020 wild-card and 2025 NLCS. Milwaukee is 3–10 against Los Angeles in the games of those series.

Yelich is the Brewers’ touchstone, especially because immediately after arriving in a trade from Miami he won the MVP and led the Brewers to their first postseason in seven years—until the Dodgers stopped them in a Game 7 in Milwaukee. He is the catalyst to what is the golden era of Brewers baseball. He also is one of only four players with 150 homers and 150 steals for Milwaukee, joining Robin Yount, Paul Molitor and Ryan Braun in the Mount Rushmore of Brewers.

More than his numbers, his consistency of play and values are what endear him to Milwaukee. Still tall and angular, downright wispy for someone who once hit 80 homers over two seasons, he still stands Zen-like in the box with the bat held high and straight. He still steals bases with impressive efficiency. He still has that marionette-like way of moving, full of hinges and sharp angles. And he still would rather talk about his team rather than himself.

This October has been a victory lap for Yelich, not so much for how he plays but for what he represents.

“You know, Yeli’s had a miserable year,” Murphy says, “but then at the end he has made a big contribution when it was all about the belief that, Hey, man, we need you. You gotta do something. And he did something. I've never seen such an attitude.”

I asked Murphy what he meant by “attitude.”

He replied, “It's like how he would accept failure, how he would talk to the guys on the bench subtly, stay involved, didn't get [ticked] off, didn't go in the back of the clubhouse. You know, a lot of guys, they get out and they'd walk to the clubhouse or here [in Milwaukee] walk down the [runway]. Lame [stuff]. Not Yeli. He was really, really special in how he did this. He does not act special when it comes to himself. But he does for the team.”

In the immediate wake of the Brewers’ clinching win over San Diego, I asked Yelich what it meant to win a postseason series for the first time as captain, a title Murphy bestowed on him Sept. 27.

“Yeah, I’m just really proud of the guys,” he said. “You know, this is a really tough team that we beat. We knew that coming into the series that just with the pitching involved on both sides that a lot of these games were going to be really tight and you're going to have to win on the margins and win some moments and execute. And for the most part we did that. I know we didn't play perfect, but the guys did a great job coming together as a group and finding ways to win these games.”

You might have noticed that at no point did Yelich address his captaincy or what it meant for him personally.

It was the last hour of the last Friday night of the regular season when Murphy told Yelich he wanted to see him in his office. Yelich figured Murphy wanted to tell him about a lineup idea for the next game.

Instead, Murphy told Yelich the team wanted to name him its first captain in franchise history. Yelich turned emotional. Tears began to well in his eyes. Finally, Yelich spoke.

“This is the biggest night of my career,” he said.

That being named Brewers captain tops all his personal accolades tells you what the Brewers mean to Yelich and, most of all, what Yelich means to the Brewers. He is their emotional ballast. He is their living manual of what it means to play Brewers baseball, which is team above self amid a ruthless dedication to fundamentals.

“Yeli is the one who sets the highest standards this organization lives by,” said Milwaukee first baseman Jake Bauers. “Everyone here knows to play the game the right way and what is expected of them and he shows the way by doing it every day. There are stars that don’t run 90 feet hard or don’t want to get a bunt down. Yeli does whatever it takes to win a ballgame. And everybody who comes here sees that, and knows you have to play that way or you won’t play. So that when we get to this time of year, it’s instinctual. There’s no ‘raising your game.’ It’s how we play.”

The story of Yelich’s captaincy fittingly grew out of the clubhouse, not the front office. Someone in the clubhouse (Murphy would not identify the person) besieged the manager to recognize Yelich’s importance.

“You know, I hear your interviews every day,” the person said to Murphy, “and all you do is talk about how Yelich is this, Yelich is that. The players talk about you. Why don’t you make him captain? Have you ever considered that?”

“Okay, great idea,” Murphy said.

Murphy immediately called president of baseball operations Matt Arnold and owner Mark Attanasio.

“What do you think?” he asked them.

Both had the same answer: “Great idea.” That same night was the Friday night Murphy told Yelich he would be captain.

Yelich may have endured a down regular season, but by finding the pop in his bat this month he has reminded the Brewers of what he can still provide. Murphy had recently moved him into the second spot in the batting order between his two hottest hitters, Jackson Chourio and William Contreras. But with left-hander Tarik Skubal starting for the Dodgers in Game 1, Milwaukee opted for right-handed Andrew Vaughn at designated hitter, leaving its captain on the bench to start the series. Yelich's October resurgence remains a significant development for the Brewers, even if his first contribution against Los Angeles may have to come as a reserve.

“I’m just trying to help the guys,” Yelich says. “I’m just really focusing on putting together a good at-bat and passing it to the next guy and taking what they give you. I know it sounds simple, but in the postseason and the atmosphere you're just trying to have a good at-bat, have a good team at-bat, and go from there.

“And I've kind of hit all over the order from the first to seventh, so wherever Murph thinks is best to throw me in there, I'll be ready, and go out there and try to win a game.”

Here we go again. For the third time in nine seasons, only the Dodgers stand between Yelich and his first World Series—and between Milwaukee and its first World Series in 44 years. The 18-year-old kid who decided on the S318 model is about to turn 35. The bat and the swing haven’t changed. But this time, his best shot yet, there is something new about Yelich for all the world to see: the “C” sewn onto his jersey.

“There's no more speeches or anything like that,” he said about the responsibilities of the new title. “It's a great reminder about what we want to be as a group and as a team and the responsibility to carry that forward.

“The reason that was so special to me was just because it's a reflection of what your peers think of you and the people that are around you every day. For them to think of you that way is a tremendous honor and something that I didn't have words for at the time when they told me. It was a giant surprise.

“You know, the awards on the field and all that are one thing. That's your physical ability on the field. But I kind of thought that was just something completely different. And I don't go about the day any different. But like I said, it's a good reminder of what you want this place to stand for and what you want to carry forward.”