Cody Bellinger gives Yankees a taste of what he could do for them
Chicago Cubs' Cody Bellinger watches his home run during the third inning against the New York Yankees on Friday. Credit: AP/Frank Franklin II
If Friday night was an audition, Cody Bellinger entered stage left, nailed the monologue from Hamlet, then told the casting director he was the producer’s son.
Sure, if you’re a Yankees fan, you might not have exactly relished Bellinger’s third-inning homer off Carlos Rodon, but you did have to admit it made an impact — the pretty, windmilling lefty swing, the gloriously high arc, the way it was pulled into the second deck in right.
All of it seemed to say just one thing: “Hey, you guys could kind of get used to this, right?”
Because, really, that’s what this is all about.
Before Friday night’s 3-0 victory over the Yankees, the Cubs were six games under .500 with a 9% chance of making the playoffs, according to FanGraphs. The Yankees still have no idea when Aaron Judge is coming back from the torn ligament in his right big toe, put Jake Bauers on the injured list hours before Friday’s game, and have spent the season apparently picking their leftfielder from a rotating bingo cage. (Will it be Billy McKinney? Oswaldo Cabrera? Or Isiah Kiner-Falefa, bless his heart?)
They need an outfielder, and Bellinger checks all the boxes: (1) He’s a Gold Glove defender having a bounce-back year, (2) he’s very good at pulling the ball, and it wouldn’t be too hard to foresee a glorious romance between him and the short porch in right, and (3) he’s signed to a one-year deal with a mutual option in 2024.
Did we mention his dad was on the 1999 and 2000 World Series-winning Yankees teams? And that Cody was a batboy? And that he grew up a Yankees fan?
All Brian Cashman has to do is get Cubs general manager Carter Hawkins on the phone, ship over a few minor-leaguers and make sure that Bellinger makes a right toward the home clubhouse when he gets to the Stadium on Saturday. Easy, right?
Well — no, actually.
There’s every chance that Bellinger is the answer the Yankees are looking for. Of the handful of outfielders tentatively expected to be available by the Aug. 1 trade deadline, he’s at or near the top of the list. But the Yankees need to be exceedingly cautious making this deal for a few reasons, the first of which is named Ezequiel Duran.
Duran, you might recall, was one of four Yankees minor-leaguers sent to the Rangers for Joey Gallo. Gallo spent his inauspicious Bronx career hitting .159 before being mercy-traded to the Dodgers. Duran is hitting .309 with 12 home runs . . . and oh, did we mention that outfield is on his multi-position resume? Josh Smith and Glenn Otto, also part of that trade, are in the majors, and another piece is developing in Double-A.
That’s not a transaction. That’s a robbery.
This begets the age-old question: How do you know if a trade will be a bust?
(Answer: You don’t.)
The Cubs know they’ve got a valuable chip who was slashing .298/.352/.486 going into Friday, and they’ll want to be compensated accordingly. Meanwhile, Bellinger, who was non-tendered by the Dodgers in the offseason, has shown signs that he might regress: His hard-hit rate and exit velocity are among the lowest in baseball, according to Baseball Savant, and his expected batting average is .058 lower than his actual average. His BABIP was about 30 points over the major-league average, indicating some things are falling his way.
People will point to his spray chart — his propensity to drive balls to right with power — and say that will play well at Yankee Stadium, but a deeper look into his deep fly balls doesn’t bear that out. He has 155 expected career home runs by park at Yankee Stadium and that number is actually higher at Wrigley, where he would have had 158 homers.
But that’s just nerd stuff, right? It certainly felt that way when Bellinger collected his second hit of the night in the seventh. And frankly, sometimes desperate teams can’t afford to be cute with their analytics.
That counts double if Judge doesn’t come back and the Yankees’ only answer in the outfield continues to be a revolving troupe of infielders who are running out there and hoping for the best.
It’s still useful data, though, and it becomes more useful if Cashman makes that phone call and the Cubs are asking for some configuration of Austin Wells, Chase Hampton or Oswald Peraza, plus extras.
So let Bellinger ace his audition for the next three days. Let him show the Yankees what they could have. But while he does that, let’s all remember that there might be more behind the curtain.
Laura Albanese is a reporter, feature writer and columnist covering local professional sports teams; she began at Newsday in 2007 as an intern.
