Cody Bellinger enters the 2025 season as the starting center fielder of the New York Yankees, after they acquired him from the Chicago Cubs over the offseason in a trade that was essentially a salary dump. A former MVP and Gold Glove winner who spent two seasons in Chicago after six with the Dodgers, Bellinger is coming off a 2024 campaign that saw him swat 18 home runs, log a 109 wRC+, and put up 2.2 WAR in 130 games.
In November 2016, Bellinger was a 21-year-old first baseman who’d spent the lion’s share of that year raking in Double-A. The Scottsdale native ranked second on our Dodgers Top Prospects list, which was published that month.
What did his FanGraphs scouting report look like at that time? Moreover, what does he think of it all these years later? Curious to find out, I shared some of what Eric Longenhagen wrote back in 2016 and asked Bellinger to respond to it.
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“He’s an excellent defensive first baseman, garnering several 70 grades from scouts. He’s also seen time in the outfield, including center, and there are scouts who think he could play all three outfield spots in a pinch — though the glove is so good at first base that nobody will actively endorse it.”
“That’s pretty correct,” Bellinger said of Eric’s observation. “In high school, and my first years in the minor leagues, I was very, very good at first base. It wasn’t until 2015 that I played some games in center field. It’s funny. I was actually mad, because I didn’t want to play the outfield. I was young and didn’t know anything, so it was, ‘Put me back at first base, put me back at first base.’ My manager, [Bill] Haselman, was like, ‘No, you’re going to play some outfield. You’re a little too athletic, and the more positions you play, the better.”
“That power comes from the monster hacks that Bellinger takes in all counts. He doesn’t protect or shorten up with two strikes and instead he’s constantly threatening low-flying aircraft with his incredible torque, hand speed, and uppercut swing.”
“Yeah, very correct,” Bellinger said. “Growing up, I was always the smallest kid on the field. It wasn’t until my junior year of high school when I really grew tall, so I was always playing with kids who were bigger than me. I had to use everything I had in my body to swing. When I eventually grew taller than my teammates — bigger than my teammates — that mini version of myself was able to grow into this bigger version. That’s where it stemmed from. In my childhood, I was always short, playing up. I was small playing with the big boys, and felt like I needed to swing harder to keep up with them.”
“While he does try to pull everything, he has solid plate coverage.”
“I would say I got a little more pull-happy,” Bellinger acknowledged. “I think that’s just where my swing evolved to. I kept my same approach, but learned how to lift the ball. The swing is always evolving. You’ve never got it figured out, so you’re always trying to make adjustments.
“When I was in the Cal League, which is a very hitter-friendly league — the ball flies in a lot of the places — I backspun a few balls that went out. I was, ‘Oh, wow, that’s a different feeling.’ There was one ball I hit in High Desert… that place was a launching pad. Lancaster, same way. For hitters it was a dream. I was hitting balls and they just kept going. I was backspinning them true. That league is where I truly figured out how to stay inside of, and backspin, a baseball.”
“I expect major league pitchers will feed Bellinger a steady diet of offspeed pitches, especially back-foot sliders, once they see the swings he takes. But reports on his makeup are good and he’s already shown the ability to make adjustments in his young career.”
“Yep, the game is full of adjustments,” Bellinger said. “The way you get pitched to in April is going to be different than how you get pitched to in June. And each team is going to pitch you differently, to their strength. That’s the cat-and-mouse game we all play, and all love. But I think every lefty gets attacked with breaking balls at some point. You just have to make the adjustment.”
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Bellinger has made a number of adjustments over the years, sometimes out of necessity. As my colleague Michael Baumann pointed out back in December, Bellinger “spent the final two seasons of his Dodgers tenure battling a multitude of injuries and a multi-year slump.” With that in mind, I concluded our conversation at Yankees camp with a question: Looking back, did you understand yourself as a hitter at age 20-21?
“At the time, yeah,” Bellinger said. “When I was 20, I knew myself. But I’m 29 now. Your brain changes. Your body changes. Again, you have to make adjustments.”
Content Source: blogs.fangraphs.com