Mike Trout. Alex Bregman. Jacob deGrom. Cody Bellinger.
In 2019, the Dodgers’ then-23-year-old Bellinger was a king in the baseball world. A touted and pedigreed prospect, he’d panned out well ahead of schedule, winning an MVP in just his third year in the Majors. He wasn’t quite as accomplished as Juan Soto, now 23, is today, but he was close, and the idea was the same. Here was a can’t-miss guy, the face of the next baseball generation, a superstar productive enough to win an MVP and captivating enough to possess young women to run onto the field to try to touch him. Cody Bellinger was a stud.
Cody Bellinger isn’t a stud anymore.
The guy remains well-liked. His 2020 star turn as an outfielder on a World Series-winning team who looked like he’d just wandered, baked, into Taco Bell was a riot, and while he slumped in that short season, he only slumped to the tune of stats 13% better than those of the average MLB hitter, with contact quality (exit velocity, launch angle) suggesting even that was mostly the result of bad luck. Then, last year, Bellinger really slumped, finishing the season 52% worse than an average batter and grading out, by fWAR, as the 18th-least productive player out of all 1,508 to appear in a 2021 MLB game.
What happened to Bellinger? Others have dug into that, and will continue to dig in, and will have even more to dig into as he enters the age we think of as a guy’s traditional prime. Instead, we’re going to focus on what Cody Bellinger is now.
Last night, Bellinger homered twice for the Dodgers as they swept the new-look Padres and extended their NL West lead to a likely-insurmountable seventeen games in the loss column. The home runs were enough, paired with Tyler Anderson’s gem on the mound, to power Los Angeles to victory, all by their lonesome. They weren’t anomalous, either. Only 47 players—one and a half per team, roughly averaged out—have more home runs than Bellinger so far this year. Only 65 have more doubles. Only twelve have more triples. Bellinger’s overall bat isn’t great—he’s 11% below the league average when you use wRC+, which looks at such things in total and proportionally to their impact—but he’s got a solid glove and a lot of pop, and for what stealing a base is worth, he’s pretty good at that too, nabbing eleven so far this year in thirteen attempts. Put together, the man should be something like a two-WAR player when the season’s said and done, and at 7th or 8th in the order? A low-contact bopper like Bellinger is a solid asset.
It’s hard to know what Bellinger’s long-term outlook is, largely because his career performance so far has been so volatile. He can be that low-contact, bottom-of-the-order bopper for a good team. He could find himself in the middle of the lineup for a bad team. There will be plenty of space for him in the game—he’s in little danger of flaming out—and the possibility of roaring back to his 2019 levels isn’t impossible. He turned 27 less than a month ago. There’s plenty of story left to write. But one piece that should be written in bold ink is this: When Cody Bellinger finally reaches free agency after the 2023 season, he won’t receive as much money as he might have been able to had he signed an extension post-2019 or 2020. This isn’t the first time this has happened with a Scott Boras client.
The Dodgers’ Pitching…Hole?
Clayton Kershaw’s on the IL with another back issue, and while the Dodgers got Chris Taylor off the IL at the same time, one of the few positions Taylor can’t play is pitcher. Are the Dodgers in danger with Kershaw out? Yes, they are, especially if he misses time in October or isn’t one hundred percent at that point. But while the Los Angeles rotation lacks name power, it’s got a 2.69 ERA on the season, and if you try to account for luck, it’s still got the 4th-most fWAR in the Majors. Kershaw accounts for a good amount of that, but far from all of it. It’s a weakness, but that’s a relative term.
Are the Padres Ok?
On the receiving end of the sweep, the Padres aren’t completely out of the woods yet when it comes to making the playoffs at all. FanGraphs puts the probability at seven-in-eight, but the team is now sixth in the NL, just a game and a half ahead of the Brewers for the final Wild Card spot and trailing even the Phillies. They get the Giants on the front end this week, and with the Giants only barely clinging to realistic playoff life, it’s an opportunity, and there’ll be more down the line, many of them with a now-out-on-rehab-assignment Fernando Tatís Jr. back in the lineup. If they miss too many, though, the seven-in-eight number could drop quite fast. And San Francisco just got Joc Pederson and Brandon Crawford back from injury.
Are the Defending Champs Ok?
Not quite getting swept, but still losing four of five (which is about as bad as a three-game sweep), Atlanta’s chances of winning the NL East are below one-in-ten. They were busy but in a quiet way at the deadline, and while the Mets were oddly complacent, them getting Jacob deGrom back does change things. Rotationally, the Mets look dominant, while rotationally, Atlanta just optioned Ian Anderson to AAA. Alex Anthopoulos has constructed a great roster in Georgia. Better than last year’s, probably. But it’s not looking good enough, and the Wild Card Series is a dangerous format for anyone. It’s likely the Mets avoid it. That comes at Atlanta’s expense.
Do the Yankees Really Have the AL East Wrapped Up?
For months, the Bronx Bombers have flirted with sealing the AL East, but this morning, they’re fewer than ten games up on Toronto, the Blue Jays are comparable to them on paper, and the Blue Jays have the easier schedule the rest of the way. George Springer just went on the IL with elbow inflammation for Toronto, and the Canadians’ road trip through Tampa Bay, Minnesota, and Baltimore has been just a .500 one so far, but the Yankees just got swept in St. Louis, and the New Yorkers don’t play a team with no playoff chance again until August 25th.
The Other Side of the Sweep
The Cardinals have arrived, flying past the Brewers right as Yadier Molina returned and throwing those of us fatigued by the Molina experience into despondence. The Brewers are still more likely than not to make the playoff field, but for the first time in a long time, they’re on the outside looking in, and they are not the division favorites. Losing five of six to the Pirates and Reds wasn’t a great way to exit a loudly-doubted trade deadline.
Huge series coming up between these two, but not until this weekend.
Glasnow, Haniger, Kirilloff, Reyes
In other pieces of the AL race:
- Tyler Glasnow could return this year for the Rays, at least in some role, from last season’s Tommy John surgery.
- Mitch Haniger is back for the Mariners after a long time recovering from an ankle sprain.
- Alex Kirilloff will miss the rest of the season for the Twins, having undergone wrist surgery.
- The Guardians designated Franmil Reyes for assignment.
- The Red Sox had a bad time with the Royals.
- The Orioles are holding onto life.
- The White Sox continue to be just fine enough to keep the panic button off the table, but presumably exasperating for White Sox fans.
Of these seven teams, three will make the playoffs, including at least one from the Central.
The Phreakin’ Phillies
Phinally, the Phils have won phive straight, cleaning up against the Nationals this weekend and scoring bunches and bunches to do it. Their playoff probability’s at a season high, and right now the most likely scenario has them playing the Cardinals in the Wild Card Series, which is about as good a draw as they could request. You can keep giving up on the Phillies, but they won’t let you give up forever.
Andrelton Simmons Didn’t Work Out
Turning to teams with no playoff chance, the Cubs took two of three from Miami this weekend. Were thoroughly stymied by Jesús Luzardo yesterday, or it could’ve been a sweep.
In the middle of that, the Cubs designated Andrelton Simmons for assignment, cutting bait on the defensively-focused shortstop who was partially rendered unnecessary by Nico Hoerner’s breakout year and partially underperformed even his recent woefulness at the plate. For the first time in his career, Simmons is below replacement level, slugging just .187 after never slugging less than .331 before last season in Minnesota.
The list of Cubs infield role player pickups which haven’t worked out in recent years is not small. Daniel Descalso. Simmons. Jonathan Villar. Eric Sogard. Of the offseason signings for that type of role these last five years, only Jason Kipnis has performed well. I don’t know how that compares to the league rate of success on this, but it doesn’t seem good.
Does Nico Hoerner Change the Cubs’ Offseason?
Elsewhere in Cubs-land, Ken Rosenthal maintains that the Cubs are going to sign one of the big-name free agent shortstops this offseason, a list that includes Carlos Correa, Xander Bogaerts, Dansby Swanson, and Trea Turner. This, despite 25-year-old Nico Hoerner’s sensational 2022.
I see three lanes of thought on this. The first is a bad one, and it’s that the Cubs don’t need to upgrade with a big free agent pickup because Hoerner has performed so well. This should not be the response to Hoerner’s season, as much as Tom Ricketts might want it to be. Without some additions, this is a 75-win team next year, or something in that ballpark, and the 2024 outlook isn’t much better. The second is that the Cubs should still upgrade, but can focus that upgrade elsewhere, like the rotation or first base or, somewhat peripherally but still connected, by extending Willson Contreras. The third is that the Cubs shouldn’t read too much into Hoerner’s performance, and that failing to sign a good shortstop leaves them far too dependent on one 25-year-old with only one full season’s worth of plate appearances to his name (he’s at 725 over his career now).
A big question, then, is which players would be willing to play second or third base, two spots where the Cubs might have some holes. Patrick Wisdom remains good but not great, and he’s both aging and potentially vulnerable to MLB changing the balls. Nick Madrigal is suddenly a massive question mark. Christopher Morel is uncertain, and on the brighter side, positionally flexible. The Cubs and whoever the free agent is wouldn’t necessarily have to lock into this—they can get the guy in the door and play it by ear from there—but unless the Cubs are going to move Hoerner off of the shortstop position, something that would be comparably dumb to the Yankees letting their fear of Derek Jeter’s feelings relegate better defenders to third base and elsewhere for years, the free agent should probably be willing to split time, or take a less shiny position full-time. Specifically, this would need to be the case for Bogaerts, Turner, or Correa—Swanson’s defense is on par with Hoerner’s, the other three aren’t bad defenders but aren’t Hoerner or Swanson. How does that impact the decision? I really don’t know. I will say, though, that Rosenthal could know something or Rosenthal could be speculating, and I will say as well that there aren’t a lot of great free agents at first base, second base, third base, or catcher. If the Cubs want one single big-name, impact player who makes sense for their roster, signing one of those four shortstops and figuring out the defense later is, alongside the starting pitching route, one of just two ways to go.
The Best Playoff Hunt in Sports
Major League Baseball seems to have twelve teams fighting for six playoff spots, with stars and big spenders and lovable underdogs and desperate drought-sufferers among them. Somehow, NASCAR’s playoff hunt might be better?
With Kevin Harvick winning at Michigan yesterday, fifteen drivers have now won a race in a sport which rewards wins with playoff spots. The problem? There are only sixteen playoff spots. So right now, the guy fourth in points—Martin Truex Jr.—is outside the cut line, while the guy second in points—Ryan Blaney—is holding on for dear life. Meanwhile, at least one winner—Kurt Busch currently occupies this spot, and he’s still recovering from a concussion and can’t drive—is in danger of becoming the first qualified winner to miss the playoffs under this format. Better yet, it’ll all come to a head at the end of the month in a night race at Daytona, one of the highest-octane racetracks in all of motorsports, both in terms of velocity and chaos.
Some fans don’t like this. They think Truex and Blaney should be rewarded for their consistency. Traditionally, they would have been rewarded, and in past years, this wouldn’t have been a problem. But this particular year, with NASCAR’s new car designed to leave less in the hands of the engineers and more in the hands of the drivers, at least as the engineers continue to learn it, winning has taken on new significance. In terms of what makes for exciting racing, you would think incentivizing winning would be a very good thing. What’s more, consistency’s still important. This doesn’t apply to Kurt Busch, whose concussion sucks and is an outside case, but Austin Cindric, the driver above Busch? He hasn’t been consistent enough, and now he’s in danger of missing the playoffs if new drivers win each of these next three weeks.
It wouldn’t be surprising if NASCAR put in a top-five exception or something like that in the future, and it would be fair and fine. But as an outsider, this is compelling stuff.
On the IndyCar side, the championship hunt is enthralling as well, if you can figure out how to watch it. Five drivers are within 33 points of another at the top of the standings in a league in which you can gain a maximum of 49 points in a race. Three races remain. Technically, ten drivers have yet to be eliminated. And Scott Dixon’s win over Scott McLaughlin yesterday on the streets of Nashville, by the narrowest of margins? It made a big difference, beyond just being a significant race in the current schedule.
**
We haven’t forgotten about the trade values—just decided to put the rest all together and do a bigger rundown later this week. We’ll see when we get that pulled off, but it better be soon, or our data will be out of date.
Viewing schedule for today, including some soccer of interest to our futures portfolio (second screen rotation in italics, as usual):
- 3:00 PM EDT: Watford @ West Brom (ESPN+)
- 7:05 PM EDT: Toronto @ Baltimore, Kikuchi vs. Lyles (MLB TV)
- 7:10 PM EDT: Cincinnati @ New York (NL), Dunn vs. Bassitt (MLB TV)
- 8:05 PM EDT: Washington @ Cubs, Sánchez vs. Thompson (MLB TV)
- 9:40 PM EDT: San Francisco @ San Diego, Wood vs. Snell (MLB TV)
- 10:10 PM EDT: New York (AL) @ Seattle, Taillon vs. Gilbert (MLB TV)
