In an unfortunate turn of events, former MVP, Rookie of the Year, Gold Glove, Silver slugger, World Series Champion and 2x All-star Cody Bellinger has been non-tendered by the Los Angeles Dodgers. You might remember Cody Bellinger as a young superstar outfielder for the Dodgers who could hit and play the field better than most. After sustaining an injury in 2021 which saw him miss 67 games, Bellinger just never found his swag that he had the past four years in the MLB. The Dodgers made a business decision as sensible as any because Bellinger would have gotten around 19 million in arbitration. He was eligible to be a free agent in 2024. The problem with giving Bellinger his 3rd year arbitration deal was that his numbers haven’t lived up to that amount of money. The Dodgers could re-sign Bellinger for cheaper, however Bellinger’s agent Scott Boras doesn’t like the Dodgers, a minor handicap.
In order to figure out why the Dodgers would do this and what team would want to take a chance on Bellinger, we need to dive into the numbers. When you look at the first four seasons of Bellinger’s career you see why he won that laundry list of accomplishments. But then his injuries in 2021, including trouble with his hamstring, and a rib injury really affected his play. Unfortunately in 2022, Bellinger wasn’t to return to form but did play more games. Take a look for yourself:
If you ignore 2020, the shortened season, then look at 2021 and 2022 compared to his 162 game average at the bottom, it’s clear that he struggled. His numbers are down across the board. Its really weird because from his rookie year to year 3 he really was unstoppable. I think one more statistical evaluation is necessary before we determine his value. Let’s take his run value on pitches from this season in 2022 to his last good season in 2019.
As you can tell bythhe amount of blue (bad) vs. the amount of red (good) that 2019 was a much better season. Bellinger was always prone to strikeouts with 108 in 2019 and 150 in 2022. Weirdly enough Bellinger struck out more in 2018 with 151. All of these numbers in the run value charts tell us some of the story. Bellinger seems to have lost plate discipline. A good representation of his lost plate discipline are these zone charts by baseball savant. I selected misses, batted balls, barrels and barrel percentage.
If you look closely, you can see the amount of barrels isn’t higher than 5 in any zone. Also his batted balls tend to be in just one place middle of the zone and to the bottom left outside the zone. The misses seem to be numerous outside the zone. This means that Bellinger is chasing which means strikeouts. One last chart before we talk value, the K% and Whiff % by zone. In this case, the red zone means Bellinger strikes out or whiffs often in that zone. The amount of red zones is concerning especially for a guy who won an MVP.
I usually don’t like to be negative but Bellinger has not played well in a few seasons. He needs to figure out how to lower the strikeout totals. Maybe he’s not seeing the ball well or his swing is off. If Bellinger can return to a .250 BA, .330 OBP, .500 SLG, and .800 OPS, he could get that big contract he probably wants. But first, he’ll need to sign a one or two year prove it deal. I would imagine he could be had for 1 year 15 million dollars or possibly 2 years 30 million dollars. I wouldn’t expect a long term deal yet. I hope Bellinger figures it out because he can be a special player.
Update: Bellinger has signed a deal with the Chicago Cubs for 1 year 17.5 million dollars. I wrote this before he signed when he was first non-tendered. Obviously my prediction was nearly spot on, only 2.5 million off. haha
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Thanks to Baseball Reference and Baseball Savant for the statistics and charts.
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