Fall and winter are football time, but spring and summer are for baseball. I love them each in their seasons, and can turn off the one as soon as I’m done with it, and pick up the other quite easily. This year’s lockout and delay in the season start made it a bit tougher, but here we are, mid-May and hitting stride.
The Brewers have been up and down a bit this year, but it’s still early. They opened kind of sluggishly, then got incredibly hot for a while, but have now lost 4 or their last 5, two of which came against the Reds, who were really bad earlier, but are now apparently getting hot. Today would have been another garbage loss but for one thing — my favorite player, Christian Yelich, is looking pretty good at the plate again after a couple of years of frustration. After a slow start, where I was thinking “here we go again,” he’s been picking it up lately. His batting average has gone from .218 to .259 in his last 10 games.
And Yelich made up for the loss today by becoming the sixth player in MLB history to hit for three cycles. He started the game with a double, hit a HR in his next at bat, a single in the next, and capped it with a standup triple (the hardest of the four hits to get) in the top of the 9th.
Yelich also has the distinction of hitting all three of his cycles against the Reds. His other two were within about a month of each other during his MVP 2018 season. I can only hope he returns to that form again and the Brewers put the offense behind their decent pitching. It could be a great year for them if they do.