Positives, Negatives of Yankees Big Cody Bellinger Deal

The Positives of Signing Cody Bellinger

The fact is, outside of Cincinnati or Philadelphia, there are few stadiums better suited for Bellinger's bat than Yankee Stadium. A swing like Bellinger's seems like it was crafted for abusing that short porch in right field. Just ask Soto what it was like to stare up at a ball that landed just out of his reach earlier in the 2025 season.

A big plus for Bellinger and the Yankees is that park factor. It allows him to outperform peripheral numbers under the hood, which are downright ugly for a guy who just signed a five-year deal worth $162.5 million.

At home on River Avenue, Bellinger had a .909 OPS. Away from it, that OPS cratered. He had a .715 OPS on the road. That alone may have scared off teams, which may be why he inevitably caved and went with the five years.

The Negatives

While it is true that Bellinger gets a Yankee Stadium boost, it is fair to be concerned about how a guy who is at the 50th percentile or below in key hitting categories will age. While teams aren't staring at Baseball Savant pages to evaluate players, it still isn't great to see where he ranks around the league.

.327 xw0BA - 55th percentile

.254 xBA - 57th percentile

.430 xSLG - 57th percentile

88.3 MPH Average Exit Velocity - 24th percentile

7.5% barrel rate - 36th percentile

37.9% hard hit rate - 26th percentile

Bellinger is 30 years old. It doesn't seem like any of those numbers may improve. On top of that, a big reason to sign Bellinger is that he's a Swiss army knife, and while his 7 OAA across multiple positions was in the 93rd percentile, what does that look like as he ages, too? Defense is usually the first to degrade.

Just look at how Trent Grisham's defensive numbers cratered. In 2023, he had an OAA of 7. In 2024, that fell to a 2 OAA. Last season, Grisham hit for the first time as a major leaguer, but sported a -2 OAA in centerfield.

Longterm Deals that Went South

It's true that you can have these worries about signing anybody to a multi-year deal. Just look at the Angels a decade ago.

They regretted those Albert Pujols and Josh Hamilton deals fast. The two were stars heading into getting big paydays from Arte Moreno, and outside of one Pujols season, it's safe to say both failed at living up to expectations. Baseball Savant wasn't what it was then, but you could probably guess that under the hood, Pujols and Hamilton's batted ball data showed two guys who could clobber baseballs.

Even with Hamilton and Pujols as examples, there was at least enough data available to everybody to show these guys had a shot at being a worthwhile gamble in the long term. Bellinger is already starting from a weak point, unfortunately, given those poor numbers under the hood.

The big hope from Bellinger is that the Yankees' front office saw something that other teams didn't. They were essentially bidding against themselves all winter, since Bellinger had no real suitors. One would hope that the key reason for signing him wasn't his affordability relative to Kyle Tucker and Bichette, or the ballpark dimensions.

Of course, if Bellinger looks more like the guy who was traded for Cody Poteet in 2024 for the duration of the deal, and the Yankees win a World Series with him on the roster, most fans would live with it. In the end, all that matters is a ring.

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