Christian Yelich Has the Brewers Soaring and Makes a Case for M.V.P.

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“I don’t think anybody here ever just accepted losing,” Braun said. “The front office and the ownership group deserve a ton of credit for hitting on almost every trade or free-agent acquisition we’ve made over the last handful of years. The process has been expedited relative to what you see around the league.”

Yelich, who had never played for a winning team with Miami, was thrilled to be on board. The Brewers had the longest playoff drought in the N.L. Central, but were coming off a second-place finish. They have drawn more than 2.5 million fans to Miller Park this season for the 11th time in 12 years, despite playing in the majors’ smallest market.

“I thought the one thing he would notice about our park, in deference to Miami, is there’s people there, for one thing,” Uecker said. “I mean, really, people are screaming and hollering at Christian Yelich when he runs on the field, before he even comes to bat. And it’s not only because of what he’s done here late in the season. Once he got into the lineup and people started watching him on a daily basis, it was just the way he operates. Nothing revolves around him. It’s always the team.”

That motivation has made the recent attention somewhat awkward, Yelich said, but the pennant race has crystallized the more important goal of winning. Teammates and coaches are happy to rave about him, anyway.

Darnell Coles, the hitting coach, praised Yelich’s sophisticated understanding of his own swing, a skill he also recognized in tacticians like Tony Gwynn, Miguel Cabrera and Victor Martinez. Infielder Travis Shaw called Yelich’s swing easily repeatable, because of its simplicity and his ability to quickly correct flaws.

As a boy, Yelich loved the Dodgers and their smooth left-handed slugger, Shawn Green; he remembers how Green would toss his batting gloves into the crowd after home runs. Yelich’s own sweet swing was self-taught, he said, never molded by a private hitting coach.

“It’s just how I’ve always swung a baseball bat,” Yelich said. “I was the first person in my family to play baseball. No one was like, ‘Here’s how you swing.’ It was just like, ‘Let’s go hit and figure it out along the way.’ I always kind of figured it out.”

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