Milwaukee Brewers left fielder Christian Yelich heads toward the 2023 MLB All-Star break playing his best baseball in four years. For a couple of months, Christian Yelich has nearly replicated the kind of stats that he put up during his 2018 NL MVP season and his subsequent MVP runner-up campaign. What's been the difference for the Brewers' star in 2023 compared to the previous three years?

Yelich knew that he had to make a change. The Brewers gave Yelich a nine-year, $215 million contract extension in 2020 when he had arguably the best two-year stretch of any player in MLB. After winning consecutive batting titles and posting an OPS of 1.000 and 1.100 in his first two seasons with the Brewers, Yelich never had an OPS north of .786 from 2020-2022.

“In the big leagues, you always have to adapt, always have to make adjustments to improve,’’ Yelich told USA TODAY Sports. “It’s adapt or die in this league. If you don’t adapt, you don’t last long.

“I got into a lot of bad habits and I knew I had to make some changes. I had to do something. “You can’t fool anyone in this league.’’

The biggest change the 31-year-old made was eliminating his leg kick at the plate. Yelich did so on May 4 and hit a home run against the Colorado Rockies. On May 3, Yelich was hitting .227/.320/.345 with three home runs. Two months later with the Brewers tied for first place, Yelich has a .279/.376/.449 slash line and 10 homers.

“I had to experiment, because what I was doing wasn’t working,’’ Yelich said. “I had to make an adjustment, and when I homered in Colorado, that kind of helped buy into it a little bit. It was foreign to me. I knew I had to give it some time. It wasn’t going to work overnight.

Milwaukee is 13-5 in its last 18 games. The Brewers and Cincinnati Reds are tied for the best record of any team in the NL Central.