Yelich goes deep in 1,500th game: 'Makes you feel a little old'

MILWAUKEE – Playing in 1,500 Major League games is an achievement in itself, since only 730 of the nearly 21,000 men who played a single game in the big leagues have made it as far as Christian Yelich made it on Monday.

But Yelich isn’t content to just play. The 33-year-old, 13-year veteran wants to produce like he did in a 5-1 win over the Astros at American Family Field, with a two-run homer early and a walk, a stolen base and a run late for a Brewers team, just like its longtime star, that has been grinding through the early part of the season.

“When you play your first one, you don’t know how many you’re going to get, so you try to enjoy them all,” Yelich said. “Fifteen hundred later with hopefully a few more to go, it’s pretty cool.”

Playing that many games provides some perspective.

“Mixed into 1,500 games are a lot of bright spots and a lot of tough moments, too,” Yelich said. “Teaching moments that I think you have to go through to understand that you’re always going to come out the other side, and you’re usually better for it when you go through those tough stretches.”

That was a lesson for Brewers starter Tobias Myers, who missed the start of the season with an oblique injury, then struggled through his first two starts including one against the White Sox in which he was pulled after two innings. Against the Astros, he pitched into the sixth inning and got some help to escape a bases-loaded jam from reliever Nick Mears as the Brewers followed Sunday’s shutout victory over the Cubs with another strong pitching performance against the Astros.

It was also a lesson for Brewers infielder Vinny Capra, who made the team by hitting everything in sight during Spring Training, only to fall into a funk as a part-time player in the regular season. His slump extended to 0-for-36 through his first two at-bats on Monday – tying for the third-longest drought in franchise history for a position player, nine outs shy of Craig Counsell’s dubious club record at 0-for-45. But Capra knocked the monkey off his back by lining a clean single during the Brewers’ two-run eighth.

He’s at the start of his Major League career. How does Capra process Yelich’s milestone?

“He’s seen a lot and to have him on this team, it’s a blessing,” Capra said. “To see how he goes about it when he’s struggling, see how he comes to the field every day and the example he sets, it’s incredible.”

The Brewers won with back-to-back, two-out, run-scoring hits from William Contreras, who singled home the game’s first run, and Yelich, who sent a Ronel Blanco curveball a Statcast-projected 413 feet over the right field wall. Yelich later walked and scored in the eighth, representing another positive day after he snapped an 0-for-19 funk with a base hit in Sunday’s win over Chicago.

Yelich conceded that his opening month was more up and down than he’d like, which isn’t altogether surprising considering that he is coming off back surgery. First, he had to get healthy. Only then could he start to tinker with his swing.

“There’s spots where it’s like, ‘OK, there it is. Here we go,’” Yelich said. “Hopefully that shows up some more.”

As important as Yelich is to the Brewers on the field, he’s also part of what happens in the clubhouse. For more than an hour on Monday afternoon, he was part of a meeting of manager Pat Murphy’s so-called “pillars,” a group that also included Freddy Peralta, Rhys Hoskins, Jose Quintana, Brice Turang and Trevor Megill. Contreras is another pillar, but he had other duties preparing with Myers to tangle with the Astros.

Once a month, those players gather in the manager’s office to talk.

“The rules of engagement of the leadership meeting is we talk about the people in the room and I ask questions,” Murphy said. “They’re not talking about other guys on the team. If the leadership group is performing well and is in the right mindset, we have a chance. They’re the best guys in the room in terms of veterans playing key positions.”

Yelich is the most veteran hitter of them all. Two thousand games seems a long way away, but he’ll make a run at it.

“Fifteen hundred makes you feel a little old,” he said. “That’s a lot of seasons, a lot of games.”