Entering free agency, the feeling was that the Yankees would be in a hard-fought fight with other teams for Cody Bellinger’s services.
While I don’t doubt that teams are interested in a versatile outfielder who can also play first base at a high level, I don’t believe that these teams are making seven-year offers for these services.
The underlying metrics from his 2025 season and the 31st birthday that is only seven months away would indicate that we’re not looking at a particularly favorable market here.
Yankee Stadium was built perfectly for Cody Bellinger’s swing; a ballpark that does not have a similar set of dimensions anywhere else which could hurt his ability to produce consistently if he were to sign elsewhere as well.
All of these variables, on top of Scott Boras’ reported demands, point to the notion that these two sides will end up making a deal happen eventually.
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Why The Yankees and Cody Bellinger Will Eventually Come to An Agreement
Looking from the Yankees’ perspective, their focus on Cody Bellinger and their current roster composition would make for an obvious fit on their roster.
He is an excellent defensive left fielder and by signing Trent Grisham back on the one-year Qualifying Offer, the outfield is aligned to keep him in the corner outfield for the next few seasons.
Offensively, while the Yankees are covered against righties, they struggle against lefties on-paper because of their slew of lefties who don’t hit righties that well.
Bellinger is an excellent hitter against southpaws and can address those needs directly by replacing one of their worst options against lefties (Jasson Dominguez) with an excellent all-around bat in those matchups.
Only DH (1.5) has less projected WAR than LF (2.0) for the Yankees according to FanGraphs Depth Charts, so there’s a massive boost to be had with his return from a roster standpoint.
Depth Charts is probably the most optimistic projection system for the Yankees’ position player group, but Steamer shares a similar opinion of them being their best position player group as well.
I think the Dodgers end up with the top group and the Mets are probably going to do some shopping to contend for that mark as well, but Cody Bellinger’s return would give the Yankees a really strong unit with good continuinity and synergy.
The synergy stems from having some more lineup balance and bench options that Aaron Boone can plug and play if needed, and if they can find a right-handed bat who can backup Austin Wells or Trent Grisham, they could be elite.
Now shifting perspectives to Cody Bellinger, the fact of the matter is that no team would get more value from his services than the Yankees, and that might reflect in the contract offers as well.
Using Jacob Edelman’s wOBACON estimator model, we can look at Cody Bellinger’s spray chart and try to figure out how well the left-handed hitting outfielder would perform depending on the ballpark he played in.
wOBACON measures offensive performance using wOBA but only on balls in play to just measure how ballpark environments could effect his offensive output.
This model determines that Bellinger would have performed notably worse in Citi Field or Dodger Stadium, and while I’m sure teams have their own perpietary models, I doubt they deduce that their homefields would benefit his swing.
A more simple manner for measuring the impact that Yankee Stadium had on Bellinger’s offense is looking at his wOBACON by his home-road splits.
While he had a .403 wOBACON at home, it was a mere .333 on the road, he was Ben Rice at home and Masyn Winn on the road, which is a stark split that will also pop-up when teams determine what contract they’ll hand out.
I don’t think Cody Bellinger is only a good hitter because of Yankee Stadium as he produced a 108 wRC+ while playing 50% of his games in Wrigley Field which is incredibly hitter-averse for lefties.
That being said, is a 110-115 OPS+ hitter with excellent defense in his early 30s going to get a six-year contract from another team?
I don’t think the Yankees will overextend themselves for Cody Bellinger and I do not believe other teams will overextend themselves for him, and while it’s not remotely a guarantee, I think we’ll see him back in the Bronx for 2026.
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