Yelich's hot bat lets him show off wheels

SAN FRANCISCO -- Here’s the side effect for the Brewers of Christian Yelich hitting again: He gets to show off his skills on the basepaths.

Take Tuesday’s 6-2 win over the Giants, when Yelich did his best Lorenzo Cain impersonation and scored all the way from first base on a two-out single. It was an Omar Narváez bloop hit that came off the bat at 84.6 mph, traveled 188 feet to left field and fell in front of a sliding Alex Dickerson, who inadvertently kicked it away.

“That's as much effort as it is speed,” Brewers manager Craig Counsell said. “Christian quietly does a really good job at that. Sometimes it's effort as much as speed that helps you on those plays. He has both of those. You have to have both to make it work.

“He's as fast as anybody. Once he gets into that second and third gear, the amount of ground he covers is really impressive.”

The key, of course, is being on base enough to capitalize on those opportunities, and Yelich has been on base a lot more of late. In his last 19 games through Tuesday, Yelich was hitting .351 with a hit in every game but one -- an Aug. 20 loss to the Nationals in which Yelich appeared as a pinch-hitter. He hit a 96.3 mph ground ball up the middle, but Washington had it positioned perfectly for a double play.

Yelich started a hitting streak the next day and extended it to 11 games with a single in the third inning of Wednesday's game in San Francisco.

“He's a great hitter and he's going to hit,” Counsell said. “Everybody has really high expectations for Christian. He has high expectations for himself.”

Cousins adds experience

One Brewers coach could remember only one other instance in recent years that the Brewers used their entire allotment of mound visits in a game before the Brewers did so on Tuesday, including a trio of visits to rookie reliever Jake Cousins in the seventh inning while San Francisco’s Austin Slater was at second base.

Cousins had issued a pair of one-out walks and was trying to keep the Brewers’ lead -- 6-1 at the time -- wide enough to avoid calls for top relievers Brad Boxberger, Devin Williams and Josh Hader. The Brewers watched Slater closely, with catcher Narváez going out three times to talk about the signs, while Brandon Belt battled through an eight-pitch at-bat. Finally, Belt struck out. When Cousins struck out Buster Posey, he was out of the inning.

“It was a good inning for Jake in that he had to go through a lot,” Counsell said. “I thought there was an inning where there was a little bit of a learning experience going on and a lesson from the inning. We’ve got to take that from that inning. In the end, he made some good pitches to a great hitter to put up a zero.”

‘Speed dating’ for Maile

The Brewers have had good continuity at catcher for months now, with Narváez and Manny Piña splitting duties. After Piña tweaked his left oblique in batting practice on Monday afternoon and landed on the 10-day injured list on Wednesday, it meant a September callup for Luke Maile.

He was with the Brewers in Spring Training and for one stint from April 27-May 12 when Narváez and Piña were both injured, but it’s been awhile.

“Coming into this year, this was definitely going to be my role, right?” said Maile, who signed as a free agent in December 2020. “There are guys I had a pretty good rapport with early in the year and certainly in Spring Training, and then there’s guys we’re going to have to do a little ‘speed dating’ and learn on the fly. It’s nothing new for me in my fourth organization. We’ll make it work. The guys have done an unbelievable job and I’m here to piece it in and go from there.”

Maile played in the Majors for parts of five seasons with the Rays and Blue Jays before coming to the Brewers, but this is his first September with a contending club.

“It’s so refreshing to be in September when the weather starts getting colder and you’re not on a team that’s climbing out of the cellar or just in the middle of the pack,” he said. “It’s a lot of fun. This is the first time for me being a part of this. I’m really honored, really excited, but as I mentioned before, it’s time to keep playing consistent baseball like the guys voiced last night, and that’s what I’m going to do.”

Brewers, MLB mark Childhood Cancer Awareness Day

On-field personnel for the Brewers and Giants and teams across Major League Baseball wore gold ribbon decals and wristbands on Wednesday to raise awareness for childhood cancer research and treatment. “Childhood Cancer Awareness Day” opened Childhood Cancer Awareness Month in collaboration with Stand Up To Cancer, meant to show support for the cause with outreach to local hospitals treating young patients in their communities. Approximately 15,000 children younger than 20 are diagnosed with cancer each year in the United States, according to MLB.