Losing Juan Soto is going to hurt the Yankees‘ offense, when you see a generational player leave your franchise it will almost always lower the team’s chances of winning both short-term and long-term. The Yankees’ Plan A was bringing back Soto, but after being out-bid by the Mets, they were forced to enact their Plan B, with Cody Bellinger being the first position player they imported after the sweepstakes ended.
A player whose ties to the organization date back to the 90s dynasty with his father Clay, the Yankees identified that Cody Bellinger’s pull-heavy swing could play much better in Yankee Stadium than it did in Wrigley Field. Last night Bellinger launched his first home run in the Grapefruit League, adding a double to go with it.
When Bellinger pulls the ball in the air good things happen, and the Yankees saw a glimpse of how productive he can be by targeting right field.
Cody Bellinger Fitting Right in With the Yankees’ Offense
Cody Bellinger was in the 32nd Percentile in Barrel% and in the 15th Percentile in Hard-Hit% last season and yet the Yankees expect him to launch over 20 home runs this season. Bellinger’s percentile scores in the Exit Velocity or Barrel% departments are identical to what you would see from someone like Alex Verdugo, so why do the Yankees believe that he’s going to help the team remain near the top of HR leaderboards?
Hitters have found ways to hit the long ball without posting elite scores in the batted ball department, and it comes down to how baseballs spin off the bat. After a great 2023 season where Cody Bellinger recorded a 4.4 fWAR, he made alterations to his batted ball profile to try and pull the ball in the air a bit more, and while his numbers dipped, his appeal to the Yankees grew exponentially.
While a pulled flyball is better than an opposite-field one in almost every ballpark, few reward left-handed hitters for doing so more than Yankee Stadium. Since being opened in 2009, Yankee Stadium has the highest SLG% (2.002) on pulled flyballs from lefties, and no batter would have benefitted from that last year than Cody Bellinger himself.
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The Yankees know that Cody Bellinger won’t run a double-digit barrel rate, but they do know that he’s capable of pulling a ton of flyballs in the air, and in the Bronx that will lead to tons of HR production. Yesterday we saw Bellinger sock a first-inning home run, a ball that would have gone out in just nine MLB ballparks including Yankee Stadium, and it wouldn’t have gone out at Wrigley Field.
In a lot of cases, Cody Bellinger’s pulled contact to right field died at the warning track in Wrigley Field when it would have gone out at Yankee Stadium. There were seven balls that Bellinger hit at home that didn’t leave the yard, but they would have been home runs in the Bronx, and that would have completely changed his 2024 OPS. If you convert those seven batted balls that didn’t leave the yard at Wrigley Field but would have at Yankee Stadium into home runs, Bellinger’s slashline would have gone from .266/.325/.426 to .273/.332/.469.
That .801 OPS would have been in between Christian Walker (.803) and Manny Machado (.797), and that’s a number the Yankees would gladly take from Bellinger in 2025. Wrigley Field was one of the worst ballparks in baseball for left-handed batters to hit at last season, and going to Yankee Stadium will help a lot in the power department. Where he hits in the lineup is still yet to be seen, but Bellinger’s profile shares a striking resemblance to what Anthony Rizzo brought to the table in 2022.
In 2022, Anthony Rizzo took full advantage of the transition from Wrigley Field to Yankee Stadium, pulling flyballs in the air and tying his career-high in HRs at 32 as a result. The concussion he suffered in 2023 made people overlook that he was doing the same thing in the first half of that season, and I think Bellinger could take a page out of Rizzo’s book to have success in the Bronx.
Cody Bellinger, just like Anthony Rizzo, is also transitioning from Chicago to New York, and the Yankees have started targeting lefties more and more with those traits. Jazz Chisholm mentioned to Eno Sarris that he pulled the ball more when he came over to the Yankees, something that’s reflected in his batted ball data, and Austin Wells began pulling the ball more in the second half after making adjustments to his swing.
Unlike the other hitters mentioned, Cody Bellinger doesn’t have to make adjustments; he just has to stay healthy and do what he did in 2024 to have a big year in the Bronx.