The New York Yankees watched Juan Soto walk to the New York Mets for an unfathomable sum of money while Kyle Tucker was shipped off to the Chicago Cubs. The latter transaction created an outfield logjam that allowed Brian Cashman to pursue outfielder Cody Bellinger, who is coming off of a good-not-great season where he posted a 109 wRC+ and 2.2 fWAR. It’s unclear where he’ll stick on the field, as the Yankees could shift him to left or centerfield or stick him at first base if they cannot find an upgrade there.
Most are concerned with the bat; that’s completely fair in the wake of losing Juan Soto. The Yankees are going to need Bellinger to be a firmly above-average hitter in 2025, and while he doesn’t have the eye-popping Baseball Savant page you hope for, he does have traits that should play well at Yankee Stadium.
Cody Bellinger Could Bring More Power Than Expected to the Yankees
The first data points that people will look at to identify if a hitter classifies as a power bat or not are exit velocity and barrel rate. If you have a high exit velocity and a high barrel rate, there’s a good chance you’ll hit a lot of home runs, but if you don’t grade out well in either metric you’re immediately considered not a power threat. It’s not unsubstantiated; the best power hitters in the game tend to hit the ball hard, and Cody Bellinger didn’t impact the ball much in 2024.
Last season he was in the 32nd Percentile in Barrel%, the 23rd Percentile in Average Exit Velocity, and in the 15th Percentile in Hard-Hit%, so why did the Yankees add him onto their roster? Unlike other hitters with poor batted ball data, Cody Bellinger pulls the ball a ton in the air, and that should play extremely well at Yankee Stadium.
While a Baseball Savant screenshot can make Bellinger look like Alex Verdugo or Andrew Benintendi, he’s far more comparable to someone like Isaac Paredes or Jose Altuve.
Cody Bellinger doesn’t have the damage rates that Altuve does or the pull rates than Paredes has, but he blends all of those skills decently well to have the kind of approach that can mimic what those two infielders have done. All of them share the distinction of not hitting the ball hard while pulling the ball in the air, and both Altuve and Paredes have proven that it can generate consistent game power, but what allowed them to outhit Bellinger in 2024?
A hitter’s home ballpark can play a huge role in their success, especially when they don’t impart much damage on contact such as the aforementioned trio. Jose Altuve is built for Houston, and while he would have success in most ballparks, he probably wouldn’t have a great time trying to hit in a park like Camden when it had the walls pushed back. Altuve would have hit just 23 home runs over the last two seasons instead of 41 according to Baseball Savant, and Bellinger suffered from playing in a ballpark that neutralizes pulled flyballs from left-handed batters.
Wrigley Field has the fifth-worst wOBA for left-handed pulled flyballs whereas Yankee Stadium has the second-best wOBA for those batted balls over the last three seasons. This showed in Bellinger’s home-road splits, as he was a dramatically different hitter when playing away from Chicago in 2024:
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The difference in home-road splits play into the data regarding Wrigley Field, and according to Baseball Savant, Cody Bellinger would have hit 24 home runs had he played all of his games at Yankee Stadium. Granted, its impossible to play 100% of your games at one ballpark, but having 81 of the 162 possible games you can play come at Yankee Stadium will certainly help someone like Bellinger generate power.
Steamer would agree with this theory as well; Bellinger’s projected wRC+ increased from 109 to 112 as he’s projected to hit 23 home runs across 136 games. He’s one of just four Yankees projected to hit 20 or more home runs in 2025, and that’s a nice boost to the middle of the offense. Based on what Brian Cashman can do to boost other parts of the lineup, they could end up with 5-6 players who are projected to hit at least 20 home runs in 2025, and depth is important.
Cody Bellinger isn’t just bringing a bat that should play well at Yankee Stadium, he’s also bringing skills that the Yankees desperately need in light of losing Juan Soto.
The Yankees Could Shift Towards a More Well-Rounded Roster
It would be hard to sell me on the idea that the Yankees can build a better team than their 2024 counterparts, but if they’re going to try they need to be meaninfully better on the basepaths and on defense. Last year’s squad wasn’t bad defensively, but they were top-heavy on that side of the ball as shortstop, catcher, left field, and third base did the heavy lifting on their DRS and OAA numbers.
They were abhorrent at second, center field, and right field while having a turnstile at first base that left them weaker than they should have been defensively. If Bellinger plays left field, which I think is the right course of action given the abundance of trade targets at first base, the Yankees would have an above-average defender in right field, left field, shortstop, third base, and catcher, leaving first base and second base as question marks.
I won’t pretend that Jasson Dominguez is anything special in center field, but I do believe he’s a fine-enough defender out there compared to left field. He’s used to the reads and routes, and he has the speed and arm to make up for some of the finer skills that he currently lacks in the outfield. Depending on who they get in the infield, they could be a top-flight defensive team, which would directly impact run prevention.
Again this would be trying to go from a good defensive team to a great one; where they have to do their heavy lifting is on the basepaths, where they’ve been terrible for years.
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Baserunning Runs can track baserunning value all the way back from 2016, and in that timespan, the 2024 Yankees posted the second-worst mark as a team (-16). Only the 2018 Blue Jays grade out as a worse baserunning team, and they’re also an exception in the sense that they were the only team with -10 Runs or worse to make the playoffs and win a playoff game.
Teams who are that bad on the bases tend to not be very good; the Yankees were the exception thanks to historic dominance from Aaron Judge and Juan Soto, which they won’t have in 2025. Even if they re-signed Soto, the odds that he and Judge repeat their offensive production from the season prior aren’t exactly high. The Yankees desperately need good baserunners, and Cody Bellinger definitely adds to that.
He does a good job taking extra bases and that’s an area where the Yankees struggled last season, and Bellinger is just one piece in their baserunning equation. Jasson Dominguez and Jazz Chisholm getting to play everyday from Day 1 should help the Yankees improve their baserunning abilities, but like Bellinger they can bring some home-run power as well to the table.
Cody Bellinger can’t be all the Yankees do to address their offense; I standby my take that if he’s their Plan C, then its an extremely underwhelming pivot off of Juan Soto. That being said, he makes the Yankees better, and the Yankees might just make him better as well.