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Photo AP Christian Yelich of the Milwaukee Brewers runs to practice for Game 1 of the NLDS baseball game on Tuesday in Milwaukee.
MILWAUKEE (AP) – Perhaps the most surprising part of the Milwaukee Brewers’ run for the NL Central title is that they won it without a typical Christian Yelich season.
The NL’s 2018 MVP missed much of the first half with low back strain and didn’t hit with much power on his return. He’ll have a chance to make up for it as the Brewers seek their first World Series title, though he’s not so worried about his personal new start.
“I think it’s zeros for everyone and you’re just focused on trying to win”, Yelich said Tuesday. “Nobody cares who does it, how it is done, as long as we come out on top.
“I think that’s the beautiful thing about this team, but also the playoffs, is that winning is always first. You just want to be a part of it and help contribute in any way you can.
Milwaukee opens his fourth straight playoff appearance, a franchise record, on Friday when he welcomes NL Eastern champ Atlanta Braves in Game 1 of an NL Division Series. Ace Corbin Burnes (11-5, 2.43 ERA) will kick off the opener against Charlie Morton (14-6, 3.34), with Brandon Woodruff (9-10, 2.56) to face Max Fried (14-7 , 3.04) in game 2.
The Brewers have made the playoffs every year since Yelich acquired the Miami Marlins before the start of 2018. Milwaukee had only made four total playoff appearances out of nearly half a hundred before his arrival.
“You never want to take this for granted because of how difficult it is to get there” Yelich said. “Even though we’ve done it four years in a row, you still realize that it’s a long year and that a lot has to happen. We’ve had to overcome a lot of things this year as a team – injuries, COVID, among a lot of other things. “
But Yelich hasn’t been quite the same player in recent years as he was in his first two seasons in Milwaukee.
After posting the best batting average and best hitting percentage in the National League in consecutive seasons in 2018 and 2019, Yelich reached just 0.205 with 12 homers and 22 RBIs in 58 games last year in as one of the many star players fighting the pandemic. shortened season.
Yelich has hit 0.248 this season with nine home runs and 51 RBIs in 117 games, although 70 walks brought his base percentage to 0.362. He hit .221 with a home run after the start of September.
Brewers still believe Yelich can produce. He will face the Braves for the first time this season, as he recovered from his back injury when they met in May and faced COVID-19 when the Brewers traveled to Atlanta in late July.
“He’s a very good player” Brewers president of baseball operations David Stearns said. “I expect him to perform, I think he expects to perform, and we can’t wait to see how that turns out. We’ll go into any sort of post-season retrospective analysis, but for now we expect Christian to perform at a level that helps us win games.
Yelich is proud that the Brewers have made regular playoff appearances since joining. He wants to help make this playoff series last a little longer than the others.
“I think we as a team expected to be here”, Yelich said. “That was our goal, that’s what we wanted to be. I think if we weren’t successful it would have been a 100% disappointment. But you want to give yourself as a team and organization as many apple bites as you can. So you have to participate every year and hopefully one of those years, or several years, you can get it to the finish line.
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