Yankees Should Let Star Slugger Sign With Mets

The difference between Soto and Bellinger, though, outside of a world of talent and a potential enshrinement in Cooperstown, is that there should be no bidding war between Steve Cohen and Hal Steinbrenner. Bellinger had a great season in the Bronx—maybe his best since that 2019 MVP campaign, if you're going by Fangraphs WAR—but he isn't the player he once was, and a lot of his offensive production last season was based on how well he fit Yankee Stadium.

His biggest hit of the year was an apropos wall scraper that went just above Soto's glove. It wasn't some towering blast.

For two straight seasons, Bellinger has been at the 50th percentile or well below it in xw0BA, xBA, xSLG, Average Exit Velocity, Barrel Rate, Hard Hit Rate, and Bat Speed. While teams should not make personnel decisions based on two seconds of Baseball Savant research, it is fair to wonder if Bellinger regresses to the mean, looking more like that slightly above league average 108 wRC+ bat that he was in 2024.

The Bellinger Gamble

For over $25 million a year, is it worth taking a gamble on an up-and-down slugger that once went through a stretch of posting a 78 wRC+ in 1,143 plate appearances? That was Bellinger from age 24 to 26, between 2020 and 2022. Bellinger hasn't ever been that bad, but that stretch still happened, and if it happened once, it can happen again.

If anybody should find out who Bellinger is, let it be the Mets. They value his versatility, and if that's the case, Scott Boras should have another big dog and pony show for another one of his free agents in Flushing. The red flags are bountiful, like how Bellinger's .480 slugging in a contract year is lower than 2019 Brett Gardner's .503 slugging percentage.

Boras will play up the faux victory lap of what it means to take Bellinger from the Yankees, and deliver him gift-wrapped in a blue and orange—sometimes purple—bow, and that's fine. The Yankees will survive a few days of headlines, but what they won't survive is their owner getting gun-shy over signing other free agents, because one of their biggest deals on the books had a disappointing .703 OPS in the first year of his mega deal. The team and fans have already lived through that with Jacoby Ellsbury—no need to go through that again.

Plus, as far as winning goes in New York, signing Cody Bellinger in 2026 is lower than an NBA Cup. It will take a lot of social media manufacturing for that to be something worth celebrating.

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