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Outfielder Cody Bellinger and the Cubs agreed to a three-year, $80 million contract on Sunday, according to a report from ESPN’s Jeff Passan. Bellinger will reportedly receive opt-outs after each of the first two years of the deal. The agreement has not been confirmed by the club.
Last offseason, the question surrounding Bellinger was: Which team will take a chance on the former National League MVP who saw his offensive production fall off a cliff between 2020 and 2022? This time, it wasn’t a question of whether Bellinger was worth taking a flight, but rather how much he would earn from his next contract.
Following his National League MVP campaign in 2019, Bellinger hit just .203/.272/.376 over the next three seasons with the Dodgers. But by joining the Cubs on a one-year deal through 2023, he regained much of the power at the plate that led to his rapid rise to stardom. In 130 games with Chicago, he hit .307/.356/.525 with 26 home runs, 97 RBIs and 20 steals.
Although he has already played seven seasons in the major leagues, Bellinger is still in his prime at 28 years old. He made his Major League debut with the Dodgers at age 21 in 2017, a season in which he was named National League Rookie of the Year. He had a tremendous season at the plate, hitting 39 home runs and posting a .933 OPS.
Bellinger took a small step back offensively in his second season, although he still finished the 2018 campaign with 25 home runs and an .813 OPS. Then came his 2019 MVP performance, in which he hit 47 home runs while producing a .305/.406/.629 line and won a Gold Glove for his stellar play in right field.
The underlying quality of the contact metrics suggests Bellinger had some luck on his side during a 2023 resurgence: According to Statcast, his expected batting average was 37 points below the actual figure, his expected slugging percentage was 88 points lower than his actual slugging percentage. and both his most affected rate and his barrel rate decreased significantly from the previous year.
Still, Bellinger’s 15.6 percent strikeout rate was the lowest of his career and represented a 43 percent drop from his K rate in 2022. And the rate at which he made contact at the “point ideal” in 2023 was 38 percent, the second. the highest of his career only behind his 39.6 percent sweet spot rate from his 2019 MVP campaign.