Photo Credit: Kirsten Schmitt/Milwaukee Brewers
Two months into his first season in Milwaukee, Christian Yelich is already everything the Brewers could have hoped he would be and a little more.
Yelich was the Brewers' Player of the Month for May, batting .330 with a .387 on-base percentage and .541 slugging. He collected 36 hits in the month, the most by a Brewer in May since 2013. Twelve of them went for extra bases, including five home runs, and he went 5-for-5 stealing bases. He was a big part of the reason the Brewers went 19-8 in the month. All told, entering Sunday’s game they were 32-15 when he played this season and 5-7 when he didn’t.
Perhaps just as notably, Yelich was able to remain effective in May through a heavy workload. He played in all 27 Brewers games in the month, including 26 starts and one appearance off of the bench. In fact, through Sunday Yelich had played in all 41 games since returning from an oblique injury on April 18. His short stint on the disabled list aside, Yelich has played in every game he's been eligible to play in as a Brewer. Despite his time on the shelf with an oblique injury, only Travis Shaw and Lorenzo Cain have batted more often than Yelich for Milwaukee this season.
Yelich, Cain and Shaw are bucking a bit of a recent MLB trend by playing nearly every day. The number of players making 160 or more appearances in a season has slowly trended down since MLB expanded the schedule to 162 games in 1961. The number peaked a bit again in the early to mid-2000’s (20 players did it in 2005, setting a high-water mark) but has fallen again over the last few years, dropping to an average of seven per season from 2014-2017.
Stay on top of the news of the day
Subscribe to our free, daily e-newsletter to get Milwaukee's latest local news, restaurants, music, arts and entertainment and events delivered right to your inbox every weekday, plus a bonus Week in Review email on Saturdays.
Accomplishing the feat is hardly a guarantee of MLB stardom. The players who did it in 2017 saw at best mixed results:
- Rangers second baseman Rougned Odor actually hurt his team by playing in all 162 games, posting a .204 batting average, .252 on-base and .397 slugging. Both FanGraphs and Baseball Reference’s wins above replacement (WAR) metrics suggest he was less valuable than a freely available alternative in 2017.
- Royals shortstop Alcides Escobar played in 162 games despite a .272 on-base percentage. Baseball Reference estimated his value at exactly replacement level (0.0 WAR).
- Phillies (now Padres) shortstop Freddy Galvis had a little more success than Escobar at the plate but not a lot, and B-Ref estimated his value at 1.3 WAR despite the fact that he played in 162 games.
- Braves right fielder Nick Markakis played in 160 games for the sixth time in his career but did little to establish himself offensively at a traditional power hitting position, posting a slugging percentage under .400 and swatting just eight home runs despite coming to the plate 670 times.
- Orioles second baseman Jonathan Schoop played in 160 or more games for the second consecutive season, hit 32 home runs and made the American League All Star team for the first time.
- New Padres first baseman Eric Hosmer played in all 162 in his final season with the Royals and had a career year, winning a Gold Glove and Silver Slugger Award.
- Reds first baseman Joey Votto continued to be the exception to most rules, playing every day, leading the National League in on-base percentage, OPS and walks and nearly winning his league’s MVP award despite playing for a team that finished 70-92.
Votto and Hosmer aside, in recent years many MLB teams have adopted a “less is more” policy with their star players, recognizing that the performance bonus they get from a well-rested star is greater than the sacrifice they make by occasionally giving them a day off. The Brewers have often publicly discussed this strategy as it relates to Ryan Braun, effectively acknowledging that limiting his playing time is part of a strategy to maximize his effectiveness and availability.
That rule clearly doesn’t apply to everyone, however, and the Brewers may have done well this winter to acquire a pair of stars in Yelich and Cain that appear poised to establish themselves as exceptions.
