Is Christian Yelich back to MVP form amid Brewers’ hot 2024 start?

Alright, it is one thing to overreact to a strong start to a season. And I’m not saying that Yelich is guaranteed to win the 2024 NL MVP award. But he looks good to begin the new campaign, and the underlying statistics support the Yelich bounce-back narrative.

Let’s begin with the surface level stats, though. Yelich is hitting well over .300 and has an OBP of .410 as of this story’s writing. Overall, his OPS currently sits at 1.116.

Now it should be noted that Yelich quietly enjoyed a respectable 2023 campaign after struggling from 2020-2022. During the ’23 campaign, Yelich slashed .278/.370/.447/.818 and hit 19 home runs while stealing 28 bases.

At 32 years old, however, Yelich may have a chance to get close to replicating his 2018 and 2019 numbers.

According to Baseball Reference, Yelich struck out between 20-21 percent of the time in 2018 and 2019. In 2020, he struck out an alarming 30.8 percent of the time. He recorded strikeout percentages of 23.8 percent in 2021 and 24.1 percent in 2022.

In 2023, he saw that mark decrease to 22.2 percent. Again, it is a small sample size, but so far in 2024 Yelich is striking out at just a 17.5 percent rate.

So does that mean Yelich’s home run rate will go down? Not necessarily.

In 2019, Yelich hit the most home runs of his career. His fly-ball rate was a career-high 28.1 percent that season. And 2019 happens to be the only season that saw Christian Yelich finish with a fly-ball rate of higher than 20 percent. So far in 2024, though, Yelich is hitting the ball in the air 25.9 percent of the time.

The result? Yelich already has four home runs through nine games (40 plate appearances). Yes, a 10 percent home run rate will work just fine.

Yelich has also recorded a strong 51.9 percent hard-hit rate and 25.9 percent line-drive rate to begin the ’24 campaign.

Is this an overreaction?

Yes, it is early in the year. Nothing is guaranteed after the first couple of weeks of the season.

With that being said, Yelich looked like an All-Star at times in 2023. It was clear he was on the verge of figuring things out once again. Overall, the Brewers outfielder had a respectable performance.

We have seen Christian Yelich record MVP-caliber numbers in the past. There is a reason why he won the award in 2018 and was the runner-up during the ’19 campaign.

I am not predicting that Yelich will win the MVP award in 2024. However, I would not be surprised if he earned consideration. The Brewers are going to need Yelich to step up and have a big season if they want to reach the playoffs, and if he can lead them to the postseason while performing well there is no reason that Yelich will not be in the conversation.