Christian Yelich is still trying to find his form early in the 2025 season.

The former NL MVP and Milwaukee Brewers star missed the end of the 2024 season due to a back injury that required surgery. The injury happened at a time Yelich was going through a resurgent season, clinching his first All-Star berth since 2019 and during a period where the 33-year-old was leading the National League in batting average (.315).

Through the first 45 games this season, Yelich’s batting average is down to .199.

Yelich has made the full-time adjustment from playing the field to being a DH.

“I think my body feels pretty good considering where it was last year,” Yelich told Great Offshore Sportsbooks in an exclusive interview. “Just dealing with the nagging back stuff to get that cleaned up. I’ve been playing DH a lot more this year. I feel better, but it’s definitely a transition for sure.

“Getting used to how to spend your time in between at-bats and that whole deal,” Yelich continues to say. “But all in all, it’s been pretty good. We have a long way still to go here in the season, but it’s nice to be back out there.”

Yelich had played some games as the DH last season, appearing in 26 games in that role. However, as he gets older and as he’s returning from the back injury that sidelined him during the Brewers’ postseason run, he’s now focusing solely on hitting.

The former Gold Glove winner goes into further detail about that adjustment.

“It’s something I’ve done before,” says Yelich. “I would do it here and there in the past couple of years, so it wasn’t completely new to me, but there would be a day game or just randomly sprinkled in throughout the year. Full-time is a little bit different. Just kind of trying to make sure that you feel loose, stay on your feet, you’re engaged in the game, just all those little things. I definitely feel like I’m in a better spot now than at the beginning of the year.”

Yelich: Not Feeling Last Year’s Injury Effects

Yelich says rehab was pretty “straightforward” and that he’s not feeling the after effects of the injury from last season.

“Rehab was pretty straightforward,” Yelich details. “I got it done in August and felt pretty good after, and just rehabbed all off season, basically all the way up until spring training, and took my time kind of getting into the flow of things and spring training. But all in all, I feel a lot better and just keeping similar routines than in the past, maybe being more mindful,  workload and stuff on a day-to-day basis. But for the most part, it’s back to normal and just kind of getting in that season routine.”

The Brewers as a team are off to a bit of a rough start to the season, starting out the year 22-25 and five games behind the division-leading Chicago Cubs. Milwaukee has made it to the playoffs every year Yelich has been a member of the team except for the 2022 season.

“It sucks anytime you can’t participate in the playoffs or really just like any point in the season,” says Yelich of being sidelined for the Brewers’ playoff run last season. “But it is what it is. Can’t control stuff like that. I was pulling for the guys and trying to help them any way I could. You’d obviously like to be out there, but it’s kind of just how it shook out for me last year.”

Yelich — who is in the midst of his 13th big league season — says there are “no challenges” of playing the early season games in a 162-game season. He says you simply just “keep going.”

“There’s no challenges playing the early games,” says Yelich. “It’s just how long the season is. You just keep going. It doesn’t really matter where you’re at numbers-wise, (if they) are really good or bad. You just know you have a lot of games to play, and just try to ignore it, go out there and keep your same routine and keep playing. If you’re healthy, you’re out there at most of the games and usually you’re in a pretty good spot by the end of the season.”

As far as breaking out of his early-season slump, Yelich says it’s still “early in the year” and he’ll continue to “keep grinding.” Yelich’s career batting average is .285.

“We’ll see what happens,” says Yelich. “Still early in the year, and just trying to get on a roll and get some things going. So we’ll see. I think that’s how baseball works out sometimes, you have four-and-a-half months to go, so you put your head down and keep grinding.”