Image credit: Brett Davis/Getty Images
On December 17th, first baseman/outfielder Cody Bellinger was acquired by the New York Yankees from the Chicago Cubs for pitcher Cody Poteet and 5 million dollars in salary. This trade had seemed like a foregone conclusion for some time now, and while I was wary of the idea of trading for Bellinger when writing my offseason preview, I have talked myself into viewing this trade favorably.
I was hesitant on Bellinger because of his erratic production and high salary, but looking into his profile tells a vivid story, and makes me more optimistic about his outlook.
After his 2019 MVP season with the Dodgers, he experienced a sharp downturn in offensive output, his WRC+ going from 161 in 2019 to 112 in 2020 and then 47 and 83 in 2021 and 2022 respectively. His career was fading quickly, necessitating major change.
Thus, he reinvented himself in the 2022 offseason, departing from the Dodgers and signing with the Cubs. He amended his swing, sacrificing hard hit% and exit velocity for more contact, massively cutting down on his strikeouts. In 2022, he hit to a .654 OPS, but his swing changes led to his 2023 mark rising over .200 points to .881, while his average went from .210 to .307. Yet, from 2022 to 2023, his average exit velocity, barrel%, and hard-hit% all went down from being in the middle of the pack (all 40th-60th percentile) to near the bottom of the league (10th-30th percentile among these three stats). With these types of changes, one would typically expect a decline in production, but in Bellinger’s case, it was the other way around.
While his plate discipline and swing decision statistics mostly stayed the same, the outcomes of those swings changed drastically. First of all, his K% dropped precipitously from 27.3% in 2022 to 15.6% in both 2023 and 2024, while his whiff% fell 7.1 percentage points to 20.1%. He was swinging and missing far less, increasing his average nearly .100 points.
Though with this change, he pulled the ball to a lesser degree (pull% in 2022: 47.2% while in 2023 it dropped to 43.6%) and made much softer contact (hard hit% dropped from 34.7% to 29.2%), the increase in the amount of times he made contact and the better launch angle of that contact eventually led to more aggregate power output, resulting in 26 home runs. The change that he made after the 2022 season was to not always use his “A-swing” – or, in other terms, to stop swinging out of his shoes every time, and it worked, revitalizing his career.
But the remaining question is: why was his 2024 OPS .751, .130 points below his 2023 mark? On his Baseball Savant page, nearly every underlying metric stayed the same except for the launch angle sweet spot% (LA Sweet-Spot%), which details the percentage of batted balls which fall between 8 to 32 degrees, the range which garners the best offensive numbers. In 2023, he stopped using “A-swing” every time and aimed to make contact.
Even with softer contact, he still accrued respectable slugging and batting average because of his high LA sweet-spot% (38% of the time, good for 86th percentile in the league) and increased quantity of contact. This meant he was making contact more, with more of those batted balls being line drives, which are less likely to be fielded by the infielders than ground balls and less likely to be caught by the outfielders than fly balls.
But his 2023 LA sweet-spot% went from 86th percentile to 34th percentile in 2024, and this was a result of more high fly balls – his fly ball rate jumped from 29.2% in 2023 to 35% in 2024, while his line drive rate went down from 20.8% to 16.9%. This aspect of his batted ball profile has two elements to it that could be spun positively for the Yankees.
On one hand, more fly balls, most of which are hit to his pull side, are an awful match for the windy and expansive Wrigley Field, explaining his lower OPS. Yet, this would fit perfectly with the Yankee Stadium short porch. The increased number of fly balls in 2024 compared to 2023 led to the drop in his average (his BABIP (batting average on balls in play) dropped from .319 to .287), but he was not able to compensate for this with power numbers, as the unfriendly environment for left-handed, fly ball hitters of Wrigley Field prevented him from doing so.
Instead, many of these fly balls were caught, explaining the drop in both average and power. In fact, if he played all of his games at Yankee Stadium in 2024, he would have had 24 home runs, more than his actual total of 18. There are many more upsides to a high amount of fly balls in Yankee Stadium than Wrigley Field in the form of slugging, and the Yankees, who just lost Juan Soto’s 41 home runs, are in need of more power output, meaning changes to try to regain his 2023 launch angles may not necessarily be the best fit for the team needs.
On the other hand, though, his overall numbers were clearly better in 2023 with more line drives. Even with a higher percentage of line drives, he still hit plenty of fly balls, resulting in more home runs in 2023 than 2024. And LA sweet-spot% is often a metric that does not carry over year-to-year. A recent article by X.com user Jon Anderson looked at the stickiness of launch angle sweet spot% from year-to-year and found that the correlation was fairly low, and this is seen in Bellinger’s numbers in that metric, which have fluctuated. In 2020, he was in the 18th percentile, in ‘21 he was in the 45th, in ‘22 the 58th, in 2023 the 86th, and in 2024 the 34th. Therefore, we could possibly see some positive regression for Bellinger in 2025.
Yet, I do not know if this change is due to a specific tweak in his swing, as while this metric can often vary for players year-to-year, some, like Yandy Diaz and Christian Yelich, have consistently low LA sweet-spot% metrics, indicating that it is caused by the nature of their swing. But for Bellinger, who has had different marks throughout his career, amending it may come easier to him, and doing so would result in higher power output. Bringing up his LA sweet-spot% just moderately may serve to be a happy medium, resulting in more line drives that can drop in for base hits, while also taking advantage of the Yankee Stadium short porch.
This may turn out to be a savvy buy-low move by Brian Cashman and the Yankees, who still have plenty of options to pursue this offseason. Possible first and second base trade or free agent combinations could be Brandon Lowe and Yandy Diaz on the Rays, a lefty-righty combo bringing power and on-base, or free agent Ha-Seong Kim and Rangers’ first baseman Nathaniel Lowe, who also bring on-base and a higher pedigree of defense and athleticism.
Rumors have been circulating about Paul Goldschmidt, who, while he is on the decline, may be a viable platoon option with Ben Rice for 2025, given Goldschmidt’s ability to still hit lefties. Bellinger’s defensive versatility means acquiring an outfielder like Taylor Ward is a possibility as well. Replicating Juan Soto will be impossible because of the near certainty of his production, but the newfound roster flexibility brings an opportunity to set up a more balanced team for the future, and Bellinger is one of the first steps in this process.
Categories: Articles, MLB Player Profiles
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