Cody Bellinger is Two Different Hitters, and Not Just Based on the Count

[Matthew Trueblood]

In his first season with the Cubs, the erstwhile slugger dramatically decreased his strikeout rate by adopting an extreme two-strike approach. Less obviously, though, he's also become extreme in another dimension of situational hitting.

On balance, being a left-handed hitter is an advantage in baseball. You start a step or two closer to first base, so if you have speed, it's a bit easier to collect infield hits. More importantly, most pitchers are right-handed, so you'll carry the platoon advantage more often. In compensation for those edges, their downsides (that you'll usually hit more of your ground balls to the right side, where it's hard to collect infield hits, and that you see same-handed pitchers infrequently enough to make the task even more difficult) are easy to live with.

If you really wanted to, though, you could try to neutralize even those disadvantages. The obvious way is by becoming a switch-hitter, which plenty of players do. The great difficulty there is in cultivating two different swings, and in getting used to seeing the ball clearly from two different angles relative to the plate. Bellinger is a little late in life to try that, but lately, he's embarked on a different plan: cultivating two different swings based on the handedness of opposing pitchers, without having to learn to hit from a new batter's box.

It starts with approach. Against righties, Bellinger looks for the ball up, trying to crush it. His strike zone is vertical, like the movement pattern most pitchers use when facing opposite-handed batters. He'll expand high or low if he's fooled, but he keeps the plate 17 inches wide--or less, depending on the situation. Against lefties, though, he's more horizontal in the way he attacks, and less likely to chase high or low but a bit more so to swing at a ball (especially) off the inside edge.

There's a swing path adjustment that comes with that approach, too. Bellinger takes more level hacks against lefties, but harder, more damage-focused ones against righties. As a result, he hits more line drives against same-handed pitchers, which is unusual--but he gives up a lot of his high-end exit velocities in the process. More of his contact is square vertically, but in on the handle or out on the end of the bat against lefties, relative to when he faces righties.

Those changes also beget a different set of outcomes in terms of spray angle. Against righties, Bellinger is a dead pull hitter. He's unafraid to mishit it in the air or on the ground, because he'll often scald the ball enough to sneak it through the infield with that swing, and he can clear the right-field fence even when he doesn't catch it flush, because of the greater aggressiveness of his swing. Against lefties, by contrast, he needs to use the whole field. He lets the ball travel more and gives his flares and liners a greater chance to fall in for hits, by making the defense cover a wider swath.

It's all working. Since the start of last season, in total, Bellinger is batting .292/.345/.482, and his splits are the opposite of what you'd expect. Against lefties, he's hitting .332/.371/.538, fueled by a superb BABIP rooted in the approach described above. He doesn't draw many walks with his swing and approach against lefties, but he still gets to a fair amount of power. Against righties, meanwhile, he's at .273/.334/.455.

His numbers against righties are far worse than they were during the most successful phase of his career, pre-pandemic and pre-injury derailments with the Dodgers. Then again, before joining the Cubs, he was a .232/.311/.432 career hitter against lefties. This change has benefited him, and allowed him to become a productive hitter again, even though it's a more difficult and less glamorous way to play than his MVP form from a previous life.

Bellinger will be one of the most important Cubs to watch down the stretch, because a hot finish could still position him to consider opting out at the end of the World Series. That possibility feels remote, but his performance still has major implications for the future, because if he is around, the Cubs will need him to keep being a solid, matchup-proof bat in the heart of their lineup in 2025.

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