Cody Bellinger Isn't Going Anywhere, This Month or This Fall

[RandallPnkFloyd]

The Cubs' outfielder/first baseman isn't on the active roster at the moment, but the injured list is the furthest you should expect him to wander any time in the near future. You can safely ignore trade chatter about this particular player.

Image courtesy of © Jeff Hanisch-USA TODAY Sports

Jed Hoyer came right out on Monday and said it. Unless the Chicago Cubs defy what the first three-plus months of the season have shown us, they’ll be set to sell ahead of the Jul. 30 trade deadline. We’ve already heard rumblings about a handful of veteran players who could be dealt before that point. Perhaps most intriguing among them, though, is Cody Bellinger. 

Bellinger’s return was seen as something of a non-negotiable issue last winter, in terms of the Cubs’ 2024 fortunes. The team hadn’t added any other hitters with a track record to speak of, and Bellinger was coming off his best year since 2019. His average (.307), isolated slugging (.218), and strikeout rate (15.6%) were all at their best since that point, while his 20 steals represented a career-high total. They had to have him.

It took until the extreme end of February, but the deal got done. It’s the combination of that deal and Bellinger’s 2024 performance (to say nothing of his current injury) that make navigating a potential trade a daunting task.

Tabling the finger injury for a moment, Bellinger’s 2024 has been…not what his 2023 was. After a 134 wRC+ last year, he’s barely above the threshold for average this year, at 108. He’s managed to maintain similar strikeout and walk numbers to last year but isn’t replicating anything else. Most notable among the trends is the absence of power. He’s at a .141 ISO and a 7.6 percent HR/FB ratio; those figures are the lowest of his career.

If the Cubs have any interest in trading Bellingeer, they have to overcome some issues more complex than a slightly underwhelming offensive season. In a vacuum, it’s fine production. He could offer supplementary offense to a contender while providing the ability to play a stable outfield and first base. The structure of the contract, though, likely washes out on-field value questions, in favor of financial ones.

Bellinger’s contract was presented as a three-year pact. In reality, it's a series of one-year deals, because he has an opt-out after 2024 and another player option for 2026. Those two options add up to $50 million; it would require a pretty intense suspension of reality to believe that a prospective team might be willing to take him off the Cubs’ hands given the current circumstances. And that was before the injury.

Bellinger was eligible to come off the IL on Sunday, but there’s no timetable for an actual return. That leaves a minuscule window in which he could come back, perform well, and wind up involved as a part of legitimate negotiations prior to Jul. 30.

The timetable alone makes such a trade difficult to fathom. Even if we strip away the injury context, it’s just not something that seemed realistic at any point leading up to the end of the month. While the Cubs would surely love to move that contract off the books for the next two years, the control he has via the opt-out will torpedo his trade value, and the team won't want to trade him for nothing.

Jed Hoyer finds himself in an interesting position ahead of this deadline. Most of the other sellers emerging on the market knew this would be their position, or have a clear set of players who make sense. This was not the plan for the Cubs, and their leverage in trade discussions about several potentially valuable pieces is tough to pin down. It’ll be difficult enough to muster up the ability to move players from elsewhere on the roster. A trade of Cody Bellinger is a complete impossibility. 

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[Bertz]

I think it's actually quite likely he opts out this fall, assuming he doesn't tank down the stretch coming off the finger injury.  If nothing else the fact that the market for him right up until the injury was robust even with the contract structure in place tells you that he can go out and beat a raw $52M in free agency.

You're anchoring off of last year's offensive production, but respectfully only huge homers thought he was going to repeat that.  If 130 was the fair expectation he would have gotten $200M+ easily.  The heavy analysis pointed to something like a 110 or 115 and low and behold look where we're at.

The main reason Bellinger's market didn't materialize last winter is that '21 and '22 were so horrendously awful, he provided an inordinate amount of downside risk.  This season he has largely put a return to that form to bed.  Combined with already burning his qualifying offer (valued at ~$20M), and he should comfortably be able to exceed what's left on his deal.  Maybe he wants to try for a bigger platform year and wait until next winter, but I'd guess age makes that a losing proposition and he ultimately opts out. 

[Brock Beauchamp]

I'd put Bellinger at 50/50 opt-out right now. There is still enough time for this to clearly swing one direction or the other.

He can easily get more than $50m on the free agent market but why should he? All he has is upside in the contract. No one is going to come close to giving him 2/$50m. He can ride out this contract for one more year, hope for a bounce in 2025, then enter the market the following year.

[Tryptamine]

Just to kind of put a number on it, but I feel like if he finishes the year with a wRC+ in excess of 115, he's currently at 108, he's just about definitely gone. Right now he's kind of in that area where I'm not sure, but I'd lean towards him staying.