Cody Bellinger is Going To SMOKE the NL Central

Cody Bellinger is one of my favorite players in the game today. He’s a symmetrically faced, home run smasher who always looks like whenever he stays at a hotel, the guests in the room next to his have to call the front desk and complain about the strange skunk smell coming from down the hall.

He is now a member of the Chicago Cubs signing a 1-year $17.5 million deal. A steal.

Bellinger is only 27 years old and he is treated as if his best days are behind him. In 2019, Bellinger was the best player in baseball.

Here’s what he did in his NL MVP season:

47 dingers
115 RBIs
170 hits
121 runs
,305 batting average
.406 on-base percentage
.629 slugging
1.035 OPS
161 wRC+

He was also an All-Star and won a Golden Glove that season. Then there was a strange Covid year that we all pretend never happened and then Cody got his ass beat by shoulder and leg injuries that led to his numbers falling off a cliff.

Bellinger—like Aaron Judge—became the face of a new generation of hitters with the ability to hit homers to the parking lot while also striking out every other at-bat. An all-or-nothing approach that was popularized with the rise of analytics dictating the way batters play the game.

It’s absurd to fill front offices with these forward-thinking math dorks funneling information down to the dugouts almost demanding players to adopt that all-or-nothing style at-bat and then penalize them for striking out too much as if they aren’t directly responsible for all of those strikeouts.

There is no doubt in my mind Cody Bellinger will bounce back now that he’s no longer facing the enormous pressure of being in the middle of a Dodgers line-up full of All-Stars at every single position.

If you’re struggling physically to even get into the game and then you start pressing to match the production of guys like Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman then you’re most likely going to continue struggling in the batter’s box.

Heading to Chicago on just a one-year deal gives Bellinger an opportunity to revive his career. There’s also a very good chance the Cubs stink this season so if Cody has individual success then he’ll most likely be moved at the trade deadline and get the chance to prove he can help contribute to a playoff contender before hitting the free agency market again next winter where at 28, he can get one of those San Diego Padres 10-year deals.

We also need to remember that the defensive shift is illegal starting next season so all of these lefty batters who lost the ability to pull pitches into the gap because there’s like, 10 defenders standing on that side of the field now all get to, ya know, play baseball again.

And we can’t forget that whether he strikes out or not, Cody Bellinger is one of the defenders in baseball.