This story was excerpted from Adam McCalvy’s Brewers Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.
PITTSBURGH — The first rule of fighting a team-wide hitting funk, Christian Yelich said when the Brewers were in the thick of one last week, is to stop talking so much about fighting a team-wide hitting funk.
Rather than talk, he’d like to score some runs, which the Brewers have been doing with more regularity of late, rattling off four wins in the five games going into Friday’s matchup against Paul Skenes while scoring at least four runs every time. Before that, they lost four of the previous five games while getting shut out four times.
The way Yelich sees it, the worst thing about those slumps is the way they can fuel themselves if you let them.
“You start focusing all on the negative stuff and start being like, ‘Look at how bad it is,’” the Brewers star said last weekend at American Family Field. “You start focusing on it, making a big deal and everyone starts talking about it, then it becomes a thing. It doesn’t do you any good. Just flush it.”
That’s easier said than done for the Brewers’ less experienced players, who are plentiful on this roster. And for the fans in the stands, who rose for a standing ovation on Sunday when Yelich scored on Sal Frelick’s second-inning single against the Twins for the Brewers’ first run in 20 innings.
“I’ve been grinding with the hitting coaches. Connor [Dawson], ‘Buff’ [Al LeBoeuf] and ‘ET’ [Eric Theisen] have been putting in some time,” Yelich said. “It’s nice to see some of the stuff pay off. Hopefully we can get it rolling.
“I’ve been talking it over, tweaking some things, playing around and seeing what sticks. It’s just nice to get in the flow again of playing baseball. You can’t do anything about the past. The beginning of the year, it is what it is. We’ve got a lot of games ahead of us and a lot of season left.”
That was one of the messages Yelich imparted during the Brewers’ postgame meetings in the wake of losses in San Francisco on April 24 and in Cleveland on May 13.
But meetings aren’t the answer, as Yelich sees it.
“There’s nothing anybody says in the meeting that’s going to make you play better,” he said. “I think meetings are good for perspective and that kind of deal, give everybody perspective of the grand scheme of things. But when we have those meetings, it’s not like, ‘We need to play better.’ No [expletive]. Everybody knows that.
“We need guys on base, really. Our team is predicated on guys getting on base. When guys get on base, then everything works. If you’re not getting on base, then it’s not going to be good for any team — especially teams that don’t hit for a ton of power. That’s been our biggest problem. Not a ton of traffic.
“Everyone’s trying. It’s not for a lack of effort. When it’s just not going our way, it’s frustrating, it’s hard. It’s definitely not for a lack of effort. Everyone knows they have to be better, but it’s about getting it done.”
