The Milwaukee Brewers, in recent history, tend to be a little light both on offense and in the payroll department. Which makes Christian Yelich — the team’s leader in batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging, and the recipient of nearly a quarter of the team’s major league salary expenditure — a pivotal figure for the franchise. Perhaps to an extent unmatched by any other position player on a contending team. (That’d be an interesting blog for another day.)
On Tuesday, the Brewers faced a situation tailor-made for Yelich: Leading 1-0, runners on first and second, two outs, the right-handed Julian Merryweather on the mound. Milwaukee had struggled to scratch out even that one run, and just a single by Yelich would’ve given the Brewers bullpen room to relax. And yet, out of the dugout stepped the right-handed Rhys Hoskins, not Yelich. Hoskins struck out, and the Brewers quickly announced that their star left fielder was experiencing back tightness.
Oh, crap.
The news got worse in the cold light of day, as on Wednesday, Yelich revealed to reporters that he’d been playing through a back injury of late, and despite his best efforts, he’d reached a point where he could no longer just grit his teeth and muscle through it. Yelich’s back has been a persistent problem throughout his career — he’s had back issues of some sort or other in seven of his 12 major league seasons. Most recently, he missed 23 games in April and May of this year with a lower back strain. (This is why Yelich only leads the Brewers’ offense in rate stats and not literally every category.)
And although Yelich started the All-Star Game last week, he’s been in and out of the lineup around that time. Since July 11, he’s just 1-for-19. He’s also sat out two of eight games, and then there’s the pinch-hitting incident from Tuesday. So clearly something’s not right. And this doesn’t sound like something a couple Advil and a jar of Tiger Balm can fix. Headed to see a specialist, Yelich is considering the possibility of an intervention aimed not at the fastest return possible, but toward a permanent solution to his back problems. In other words, season-ending surgery.
This development comes at an inconvenient time for Yelich, who is (or was) having a sorely needed bounceback year. As you remember, after Yelich arrived in Milwaukee ahead of the 2018 season, he spent two years lighting the world on fire. In 2018 and 2019, he hit a combined .327/.415/.631 with 80 home runs, 63 doubles, and 52 stolen bases in 58 attempts. He finished first, then second, in MVP voting, and earned a nine-year, $215 million contract extension.
The ensuing five years were a bit uneven, and marked by the utter disappearance of the power that had made him one of the best players in the National League in the late 2010s. But in 2024, he’s been a monster: .315/.406/.504 with 11 home runs and 21 steals in 22 attempts. He is, as of this writing, leading the NL in both batting average and OBP. That All-Star starting berth wasn’t just the product of nostalgia and name recognition — it was deserved.
So let’s assume the worst, that Yelich is going to be out for a while, and that this late in the year “a while” means the balance of the season. Brewers manager Pat Murphy was quite candid about where a Yelich injury leaves his club: “For what Yeli does for this lineup and this clubhouse, I don’t know there’s too many players who can replace him… This is huge, no matter how serious. Whatever number of games we lose him for, it’s serious.” Even in the context of the losses the Brewers have already suffered — especially on the pitching side — Yelich is nearly irreplaceable.
Murphy said the only way the Brewers could conjure up a like-for-like substitute would be to trade for Vladimir Guerrero Jr. And while Murphy was surely being hyperbolic, I’ve heard worse ideas. Yelich and Guerrero might play different positions, hit from different sides of the plate, and look as different as any two players in the league (if you put the two of them next to each other it’d give off major Bert-and-Ernie vibes), but they both get on base and hit the ball hard on the ground a lot.
If there’s good news for Milwaukee in this injury, it’s that Yelich plays an easy defensive position. That gives them a lot of options for a replacement. Especially because Milwaukee’s current first base and DH situation — Hoskins and Jake Bauers — could also use an upgrade. The Brewers are now in a situation where almost any bat on the trade market could help them paper over the cracks. Brent Rooker’s still out there, as is the Marlins’ cavalcade of bodies. (Certainly Yelich is a reminder of how Milwaukee has profited from trading with Miami in the past.)
More likely, the Brewers will seek a solution internally. Partially because they aren’t traditionally in the business of acquiring stars — especially since the pandemic — but because outfield is one place where the Brewers have actually spent a ton of resources since acquiring Yelich.
Milwaukee’s current outfield setup of Garrett Mitchell, Sal Frelick, and Jackson Chourio includes two recent first-round picks and an international free agent who garnered a seven-figure bonus as an amateur, followed by an $82 million contract extension before he took his first big league at-bat.
The Brewers love young, athletic outfielders — all three of Mitchell, Frelick, and Chourio have 90th percentile-or-better sprint speed. So does Blake Perkins, who’d played all of two innings since the break before Yelich’s injury but started in center for Milwaukee on Wednesday. In case you were still unconvinced the Brewers have a type, they just spent the no. 17 pick in the draft on Texas high schooler Braylon Payne, one of the speediest players in the class. (Payne, who was born in August 2006, God help us all, is obviously not going to be a solution anytime soon.)
Joey Wiemer can also run, though he showed in 132 games last year that hitting is a different issue. Nevertheless, he’s putting up big on-base numbers (.376 OBP, though with a SLG of just .365) in Triple-A, which makes him an option if the Brewers need a body.
I’m sure Murphy and Brewers GM Matt Arnold would love nothing more than to see some combination of their young spark plug-type outfielders flourish over the next two months. Mitchell has only recently broken into the everyday lineup, but Chourio, Perkins, and Frelick all have somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 plate appearances this year. The results have been… OK: Matching wRC+ marks of 96 for Chourio and Perkins, 98 for Frelick.
If the Brewers want to get creative, they could also draw from their catching depth to add some pop to the lineup. When Yelich went on the IL, the corresponding roster move was the activation of Gary Sánchez. That means Milwaukee is currently carrying three catchers: Sánchez, William Contreras, and Eric Haase. And somewhat improbably, all three of them can hit. (Or at least they have hit within recent memory.) Haase and Contreras also have at least token outfield experience in the majors, not that the Brewers are likely to tell their franchise backstop to ditch his gear and get out in left. More likely Haase or Sánchez ends up seeing more pinch hitting opportunities to balance out a suddenly lightweight starting outfield.
And then there’s Milwaukee’s greatest asset in weathering Yelich’s absence: A six-game lead in the NL Central with 61 games left to play. Assuming a difference of about 80 points of OBP between Yelich and — for the sake of argument — Perkins, and four plate appearances a game, downgrading from an All-Star to one of the kids should cost the Brewers… let’s call it 20 extra outs over the next two months and change. Looking at it up close, you’d never know the difference. Even in a worst-case scenario, other stuff is going to have to go wrong to keep the Brewers from winning the division.
Of course, if you’re reading this you probably know what happens to the Brewers once they make the playoffs. Since that run to Game 7 of the 2018 NLCS — I loved that team, for what it’s worth. They were so much fun to watch — Milwaukee has made the playoffs four times in five years. The Brewers have failed to win a series in those four trips to the postseason, and are 1-8 on an individual-game level despite never allowing more than six runs in a game. That’s because, in those nine games, they’ve scored a grand total of 16 runs and been shut out three times.
Murphy’s right: Yelich’s loss is going to be deeply felt in the clubhouse and on an intangible level. And over a long period of time there’s no way to replace his bat without making a major move. The Brewers will probably be fine for the rest of the regular season. But in the playoffs, where runs are harder to come by, is a different story. Imagine a situation similar to the one the Brewers faced on Tuesday: The eighth inning of a 1-0 game, two runners on base, two outs. If that comes up in the playoffs, that’s where they’ll really miss Yelich.
