Yelich took 55 minutes of extra batting practice in the afternoon before he took on the Cardinals, against whom he had homered four times in four games here at the start of the season.
Counting the end of last season, in which Yelich drove in six runs in a game in St. Louis, Yelich has 21 RBIs and eight homers in his last seven games against the Cardinals. And in one of those games, last Sept. 26, the Cardinals walked him five times in five plate appearances. That might be the only way around this.
Righthander Hudson had given up the first three homers in his major-league career in his first big-league start on March 30.