Cody Bellinger Is in a A lot Higher Place

The Cubs signed Cody Bellinger to a one-year deal in December, hoping that the mix of improved well being and a change of surroundings might assist the slugger rebound from a pair of dismal seasons within the wake of accidents to each his left leg and proper shoulder. Though the 27-year-old middle fielder began the season slowly, he’s since heated up and simply accomplished his best calendar month since his MVP-winning 2019 season. He could not all the way in which again to his award-winning type, however he’s in a significantly better place that he was in his last years with the Dodgers.

Though he went 0-for-4 with three strikeouts in Wednesday’s 2–1 loss to the Nationals, Bellinger is hitting .291/.364/.573 with seven homers and a 149 wRC+. He completed April with a 158 wRC+, his highest for any month prior to now 5 seasons:

You’ll notice the token illustration of months from the 2020–22 seasons there (to be honest there have been solely two from 2020 because of the pandemic); I went to 11 on the listing above simply to incorporate the final of these, as they’re the one ones during which Bellinger even hit at a league common clip. On the flipside, inside the similar span he had 5 months with a minimum of 59 PA and a 72 wRC+ or worse, and three starting from 83–94 when it comes to wRC+. At his worst, he hit an unfathomable .118/.186/.215 for an 11 wRC+ in 102 PA in July 2021.

Bellinger was a Dodger for all of these months besides the just-completed one. His 10-year run within the group, from the time he was drafted within the fourth spherical in 2013 out of an Arizona highschool to the purpose when he was non-tendered final November, included some unimaginable excessive factors: the 39-homer season for which he gained NL Rookie of the Year honors in 2017, the 47-homer season for which he took dwelling the NL MVP award two years later, and a few excellent protection and well timed hitting in the course of the ’20 postseason, capped by a World Series ring.

One of these well timed hits precipitated Bellinger’s historic plummet. Celebrating what proved to be the decisive dwelling run in Game 7 of the 2020 NLCS in opposition to the Braves, the exuberant Bellinger dislocated his proper (non-throwing) shoulder after bashing forearms with teammate Enrique Hernández. Though he performed by means of the World Series, he underwent arthroscopic labrum surgical procedure in November, began slowly in spring coaching, after which within the fourth recreation of the season suffered a hairline fracture in his left fibula, knocking him out for eight weeks. Unable to seek out his rhythm as he recovered from each shoulder and leg points, he hit a grim .165/.240/.302 (48 wRC+) in 350 plate appearances, although in the course of the postseason he confirmed indicators of life by briefly adopting a shortened swing with decrease hand placement, hitting .353/.436/.471 and placing collectively some tenacious plate appearances. But whereas he received off to a stable begin final 12 months, his season shortly went downhill simply after some lunkheaded scribe instructed he is perhaps recovering his type. Exceptional protection middle area stored him within the lineup, however whereas endlessly tinkering along with his swing, he hit simply .210/.265/.389 (83 wRC+) with 1.5 WAR.

Updating the numbers from a chunk Dan Szymborski wrote in late August, Bellinger skilled the steepest decline of any participant who had produced a 150 wRC+ in a minimum of 400 PA throughout a season during which they had been 25 or youthful. He fell from a 161 wRC+ in 2019, his age-22 season, to a 78 wRC+ from 2020 to ’22; that 83-point hole is eighteen factors bigger than second-ranked Bryce Harper’s fall from 197 in 2015 to 132 from ’16 to ’18, although Harper was nonetheless a harmful hitter. In reality, Bellinger was the one participant from among the many 130 in Dan’s knowledge set who even fell beneath a 100 wRC+ over the following three-season span.

Thanks largely to a record-setting first-year wage in arbitration ($11.5 million for 2020), Bellinger’s paycheck shortly outstripped his manufacturing. He made $16.1 million in 2021, when he completed with -1.0 WAR, however dodged the non-tender and obtained a $17 million wage final 12 months. But with the Dodgers planning a winter of cost-cutting — they might let Justin Turner, Trea Turner, Tyler Anderson, and Andrew Heaney stroll with no combat — Bellinger was the primary to depart.

Despite his precipitous decline, Bellinger didn’t lack for suitors as soon as he turned out there, with the Blue Jays, Giants, Rockies, and Yankees amongst these reportedly expressing curiosity, and with agent Scott Boras telling The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal that he had obtained a number of multi-year affords. Wanting to capitalize on a possible bounceback, Bellinger selected a one-year, $17.5 million cope with the Cubs. He’s making $12.5 million this 12 months, with a $5 million buyout on a $25 million mutual possibility for subsequent 12 months.

Bellinger went hitless in his first 12 plate appearances as a Cub earlier than clubbing a three-run homer off the Reds’ Connor Overton on April 3. But even with a three-hit recreation the subsequent day, he began simply 5-for-30 with out one other extra-base hit and introduced only a 90 wRC+ with him for his return to Dodger Stadium on April 14. He went 3-for-11 with a double and a homer in that three-game collection, teaming up with Patrick Wisdom to go back-to-back off Julio Urías in a sequence that determined the rubber match. He hit two extra in opposition to the Dodgers in Chicago (together with one other off Urías) lower than every week later and, after coming back from a three-day paternity depart final week (he was one among 5 gamers on the 2022 Dodgers who apparently stored busy throughout final 12 months’s All-Star break), homered in back-to-back video games in opposition to the Marlins.

One cause Bellinger signed with the Cubs was his familiarity with hitting coaches Dustin Kelly and Johnny Washington, with whom he labored whereas within the Dodgers’ system. The pair’s familiarity along with his seeming infinite search to remake his swing — an effort that goes again a minimum of to 2019, as he labored to chop his strikeout fee — helped. Via The Athletic’s Sahadev Sharma and Patrick Mooney:

“A lot of it with Cody was just understanding and letting him talk about and explain what he’s felt over the past couple of years,” Kelly mentioned. “We knew that he’d gone through a couple different swing changes and tried a number of different things. You don’t really know what that is until you actually talk to him and get in the cage and figure out some of the drills he’s done, some of the moves and feels. We didn’t want to backtrack and try a bunch of different things he’d already tried once or twice before.”

…The Cubs recognized smaller issues with Bellinger’s decrease half, making an attempt to get him extra into his again hip and adjusting the place he locations his fingers with out overloading him with ideas.

…“The core values of what we identified as being athletic, creating a little bit more of a hip hinge and setting a really good hand placement, has remained the same,” Kelly mentioned.

In early March, CBS Sports’ Danny Vietti put collectively a side-by-side video displaying 4 years value of Bellinger stances and swings:

Cody Bellinger pic.twitter.com/yjRkm2xhGJ

— Danny Vietti (@DannyVietti) March 1, 2023

Bellinger’s ft seem like nearer collectively than final 12 months, his fingers nonetheless elevated however his bat much less wrapped. To my eye based mostly on having seen a complete lot of his struggles, he’s doing a greater job of staying again on the ball, however past that, I’ll depart the detailed visible evaluation to colleague Esteban Rivera if he chooses to take a swing, and as an alternative dive into the numbers. Before that, although, let’s take pleasure in a couple of Belly Bombs.

One factor The Athletic article talked about is Bellinger’s success in dealing with excessive fastballs because of his changes. Here’s his efficiency in opposition to four-seamers within the higher third of the strike zone.

He’s nonetheless swinging and lacking on the excessive warmth a good quantity, however already Bellinger has almost as many hits within the higher third as all of final season, and he’s making higher contact. Meanwhile, relating to four-seamers above the strike zone, his 20.9% swinging-strike fee is a useless ringer for his 2019 fee, the place he’s been at 30% or larger in every of the previous three seasons.

Overall, Bellinger’s 29.7% chase fee is down 6.8 factors from final 12 months and 4.1 factors from the 2020–22 interval. His 9.1% swinging-strike fee is the bottom of his profession, 0.4 factors decrease than in 2019, and down from 12.2% from 2020–22. Particularly of notice on condition that strikeout fee begins to stabilize at 60 PA, he’s reduce his strikeout fee from final 12 months’s 27.3% to 17.8%; the 9.5-point drop is the majors’ third-largest amongst gamers with a minimum of 400 PA final 12 months and 90 this 12 months, trailing solely Victor Robles (-12.9%) and Jorge Mateo (-11.1%).

As for what occurs when he does make contact, Bellinger’s batted ball stats are literally a combined bag:

Bellinger is hitting the ball within the air extra usually, pulling the ball extra usually, and barreling the ball extra incessantly, however his common exit velo and hard-hit fee are down relative to final 12 months, and properly beneath common. Where his barrel fee ranks within the sixty fourth percentile, the exit velo is within the thirty sixth and the hard-hit fee within the twenty seventh.

That mentioned, Bellinger is pulling the ball within the air extra incessantly and getting an amazing quantity of additional keep it up these balls relative to current years. Some of that will owe to the ever-changing baseball, however on the similar time, he hasn’t even reached the warm-weather months this season:

Driven by these fly balls, Bellinger’s Statcast anticipated numbers are significantly better than final 12 months, although they do lag behind his precise numbers:

Bellinger’s 103-point hole between his SLG and xSLG is the Twelfth-largest of the 271 Statcast qualifiers, and his wOBA-xwOBA hole is twenty second among the many similar group. His xwOBA and xwOBA on contact are each properly forward of 2021–22 however nonetheless behind even ’20, to say nothing of ’19.

In following Bellinger’s ups and downs, I’ve been burned earlier than. When I checked in on him in late April of final 12 months and famous constructive indicators of a rebound, he had produced simply 41 batted balls, and his early success proved fleeting. He’s received simply over double the variety of batted balls now (84) and 50 extra plate appearances (118 to 68) — sufficient in order that his exit velo, barrel fee, hard-hit fee, strikeout fee and extra have handed the purpose the place the numbers begin to stabilize. I’d love to have the ability to report that he’s recovered his MVP-winning type, as a result of the mix of that energy and athleticism made him one of many recreation’s most entertaining gamers. The knowledge makes clear that he’s not again to that extent, nonetheless, and it’s fairly attainable that he by no means will likely be. Even so, it’s additionally clear that he’s on a significantly better path than in his last years with the Dodgers, and for now, that’s sufficient to be enthusiastic about.