A Game of Adjustments: The Resurgence of Cody Bellinger

Cody Bellinger arrived in style. He entered the big leagues shortly into the 2017 season and took the sport by storm. He launched 39 home runs with an OPS over .900, making him one of the best hitters in baseball at 21 years old. He won National League Rookie of the Year, made the All-Star team and finished top 10 in the National League MVP race. All of this, while helping lead a young Dodger core to its first of two consecutive World Series appearances.

The recognition was an early sign that the rest of Major League Baseball was on to him and pitchers across the league were ready to adjust. That is why Bellinger fell into a “sophomore slump”. Pitchers were refusing to let him beat them and he failed to adjust back. His struggles were ultimately caused by 3 things:

1. An inability to hit secondary pitches
2. Chasing pitches out of the zone
3. Not be aggressive early in the count

Bellinger is a fastball hitter with a ferocious but long swing. This allows him to feast on fastballs but he can struggle against off speed and breaking pitches. With his swing profile, there is a limit to his offensive ceiling but Cody made it worse by playing right into the pitcher’s hands.

1. Bellinger was often early, leading to an increased pull rate and ground ball rate since many pitches that had been fastballs were now changeups and curveballs.
2. Instead of forcing pitchers into the zone by laying off breaking pitches outside the zone, Cody had a habit of chasing, especially low.
3. The most common first pitch in baseball is a fastball yet, Bellinger decreased his first pitch swing rate, even though he knew he was getting fewer and fewer fastballs later in the count.

Now in 2019, Bellinger has made himself a superstar and put the rest of Major League Baseball on notice. So far, Bellinger has played in 110 games and slashed .325/.426/.675 with 37 home runs. That’s good for 185 OPS+, which means he’s been 85% better than the average MLB hitter when adjusting for park factors. He’s put himself squarely in the discussion for NL MVP, with only defending NL MVP Christian Yelich possibly standing in his way.

How’s he done all this after suffering through such a long sophomore slump? He found his weaknesses, improved them and then played to his strengths. Bellinger lowered his groundball percentage from 40% to 29.2%, increase his pull percentage from 45.2% to 50%, and increased his hard hit rate from 40.1% to 50.9%. All of this means that he’s been hitting the ball hard in the air to his pull side much more often and when Cody Bellinger does that, really good things happen.

In order to do this though, Cody had to attack his weaknesses, which we outlined earlier. Clearly, he put the work in because we’ve seen marked improvement in all 3 areas:

1. Cody Bellinger improved his pitch score against every single type of offspeed or breaking pitch tracked by Fangraphs. (This score shows us how well he’s performed against a specific type of pitch)
2. Bellinger has lowered his swing percentage on pitches outside the zone from 28.3% to 25.8% while simultaneously increasing his zone contact percentage from 78% to 82.4%. This means he’s swing at balls far less and he’s not missing on pitches inside the zone.
3. Cody Bellinger has been hunting fastballs and though he’s actually seeing less of them this year, he’s crushing the ones he does get, especially when the count is in his favor. His pitch score on fastballs has improved from 9.6 last year to 23 this year.

Even the best players in the world possess clear weaknesses and elite pitching will eventually find a way to expose them. It’s a hitters job to recognize their weaknesses and work to improve them; Bellinger has done that and it just might result in an MVP trophy.

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