Dodgers' Cody Bellinger Ready to Explode from Sophomore Slump to Potential MVP

It's early yet, but it's looking like the best new addition to the 2019 Los Angeles Dodgers is the old Cody Bellinger.

Plenty of fireworks went off as the Dodgers outscored the Arizona Diamondbacks 42-22 to take three out of four to open the season at Dodger Stadium. Yet nobody launched as many as Bellinger, who went off for 10 hits and four home runs.

That's ahead of even Bellinger's pace upon breaking in as a rookie in 2017, when it took him 10 games to get to four homers. He went on to slug another 35 to break Frank Robinson's and Wally Berger's National League rookie record, which helped earn him the NL Rookie of the Year Award.

After a season like that, any rational person could look at Bellinger and see a potential MVP candidate for 2018. Instead, what followed was akin to a thud.

Bellinger didn't regress too far as a sophomore in 2018, yet his regression was indeed a fact. His OPS fell from .933 to .814. His homers from 39 to 25. His wins above replacement stayed steady at 4.2, according to Baseball Reference, but that was despite 30 extra games played in 2018.

So it went for Bellinger when the calendar turned to October. Though he delivered a walk-off single in Game 4 of the National League Championship Series, he hit just .115 with a .385 OPS across the whole postseason. Ultimately, he and the Dodgers fell in the World Series. Again.

Though not the reason, Bellinger's turn from the superstar path is a reason there was palpable demand for the Dodgers to upgrade their offense over the winter. In particular, Bryce Harper was the guy many wanted the Dodgers to sign, and damn the cost.

If anything, however, the Dodgers subtracted more offense than they added over the offseason. In free agency, they added A.J. Pollock but lost Manny Machado and Yasmani Grandal. Via the trade market, they added ol' friend Russell Martin but gave up Yasiel Puig and Matt Kemp.

This strategy (if you can call it that) was only ever going to work if the Dodgers got more from the hitters who gave them less than expected in 2018. At the top of the list were Corey Seager, who needed to recover well from Tommy John and hip surgeries, and Bellinger, who just plain needed to adjust.

Jeff Roberson/Associated Press

Though Bellinger, now 23, put up respectable numbers in his follow-up to his Rookie of the Year romp, there's plenty of evidence to confirm that he just wasn't the same hitter.

To wit, his walk rate declined slightly from 11.7 percent to 10.9 percent. His hard-hit rate also declined, from 43.0 to 40.1. More of his batted balls were on the ground, to boot, which further explains the huge drop in the left-handed swinger's isolated power from .315 to .210.

Bellinger didn't help himself by being overly passive, as he had a below-average swing rate against pitches in the strike zone. However, the pitchers who faced him also deserve credit. They gave him fewer fastballs to hit, and the general thinking is that they stuck to their approach better than he did.

As Andy McCullough of the Los Angeles Times wrote in December:

"One National League talent evaluator said Bellinger made few adjustments in two-strike counts; Bellinger hit .201 with a .611 OPS after two strikes. Another NL official described how Bellinger’s approach wavered from at-bat to at-bat, sometimes selling out for pull-side power, while other times attempting to slap balls into the opposite field. It is difficult to make decisions, the executive explained, when you are not sure what you’re trying to do."

Enter new Dodgers hitting coach Robert Van Scoyoc, whose hitting philosophy—as wonderfully reported on by Jorge Castillo of the Times in March—is all about maximizing efficiency. Basically, take good swings at pitches that can be damaged by good swings.

Van Scoyoc's magic somewhat famously worked on Boston Red Sox slugger J.D. Martinez. It may now be working on Bellinger.

John McCoy/Getty Images

For starters, his in-zone swing rate has already increased from 67 percent to 78 percent. He's also swinging more aggressively early in the count, and that's paid off with two singles and two home runs on either the first or second pitch.

Whatever the count, Bellinger has also been hitting the ball about as hard as any video clip of his early success would indicate. Despite the absurdly small sample size, his exit velocity is encouraging:

• 2017: 89.6 mph
• 2018: 89.7 mph
• 2019: 94.1 mph

There's even encouragement to be found among Bellinger's softer hits, such as the 85.9 mph single he hit off left-hander Robbie Ray on Friday. He poked it to the opposite field, which is something he did far too seldom in the process of hitting .226 with a .681 OPS against fellow southpaws in 2018.

It's far too soon to take all this as proof-positive that Bellinger is ready to party like it's 2017. But if the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, it's promising that he's doing things differently and being rewarded accordingly.

Otherwise, there's nothing else Bellinger must do to recapture the MVP potential he flashed in 2017.

Though his bat fell relatively flat last season, he at least continued to put his athleticism to good use on both the basepaths and on defense. Indeed, his NLCS catch and World Series throw were two of the Dodgers' top highlights from the 2018 postseason.

Any more of that, and he'll only need to keep hitting to climb the ranks of the National League's top superstars. And to do that, he needs only to keep doing what he's doing. 

Stats courtesy of Baseball Reference, FanGraphs and Baseball Savant.