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Cody Bellinger had one of the better seasons you will ever see in 2019 at the ripe age of 24 years old. In 660 plate appearances, he smashed 47 homers and drove in 115 runs while scoring 121 times and posting an elite slash line of .305/.406/.629. He was just 24 years old at the time and he was setting up to be one of the game's best hitters for years to come.
Nobody really expected him to repeat that insane performance, but nobody expected him to fall flat either - and it turns out that largely is what he has done.
With back-to-back disappointing seasons following up an MVP campaign, what can we reasonably expect from the talented slugger in 2022?
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A Big Fall
I've combined his 2020 and 2021 stats for comparison's sake, here's what it looks like:
| Year | PA | R | HR | RBI | SB | AVG | OBP | SLG | K% | BB% |
| 2019 | 661 | 121 | 47 | 115 | 15 | .305 | .401 | .629 | 16.3% | 14.3% |
| 20-21 | 593 | 72 | 22 | 66 | 9 | .195 | .277 | .365 | 22.9% | 10.2% |
You can see substantial declines everywhere. That OBP the last two seasons is really striking, coming down more than 120 points from that 2019 total. So what's been going on with Bellinger? Was 2019 just a total mirage? Has he been very unlucky since then? Has he been playing hurt? There's probably at least a little bit of truth to all of these, but let's do our best to narrow it down.
Swing Data
Let's check on some more advanced stats here.
Swing% - The percent of pitches you see that you swing at
Cont% - The percent of the time you make contact (fair or foul) on your swings
Chase% - The percent of pitches outside of the strike zone that you swing at
Brl% - The percent of balls in play that is classified as "barrels"; the most productive category of batted balls
Solid% - The percent of balls in play that is classified as "solid contact"; the second-most productive category of batted balls
| Year | Swing% | Cont% | Chase% | Brl% | Solid% |
| 2019 | 44.6% | 78.2% | 23.7% | 13.0% | 6.6% |
| 20-21 | 49.9% | 74.9% | 29.6% | 8.1% | 7.8% |
We see Bellinger swinging more, chasing more (those go hand-in-hand), and making less contact. When he has made contact, it's been much less forceful contact as evidenced by the five-point drop in barrel rate. Keep in mind that a 74.9% contact rate is not a horrible mark, the league average in 2021 was 76%. You can still have an awesome fantasy season with a below-average contact rate provided you are making the most out of the times when you are making contact. Bellinger has not been doing that.
Let's take one step further to view how the pitches he has put in play line up.
BIP Data
| Year | Avg Velo | Max Velo | GB% | LD%% | FB% |
| 2019 | 90.9 | 110.6 | 32.3% | 29.9% | 30.3% |
| 20-21 | 89.1 | 110.6 | 35.2% | 25.3% | 29.6% |
The differences here aren't very stark. You can see a slight decline in average exit velocity, and just a slight trade between GB% and LD% (in the direction you don't want to see).
What this table does not show is that his max exit velocity in 2021 was just 107.4. This is 10 or more miles per hour below the elite names in the league, so just seeing that makes it not so surprising that Bellinger has not been an elite source of homers. Max exit velocity can only tell us so much, but it does, in this case, suggest that Bellinger was not swinging the bat with the same force as he had been in past seasons.
The Shoulder Injury
Predicting the future often requires a lot of speculation, so let's put those glasses on now. Bellinger had surgery on his right shoulder in November of 2020. That shoulder had been dislocated "several" times that year, which did not keep him off the field very much but did seemingly affect his performance. The Dodgers opted to get it taken care of after the season when the recovery time would allow him to not miss any of the 2021 season. He did indeed not miss any time at the beginning of the year due to the shoulder, but even his manager admitted that he thought it was majorly affecting his performance.
It seems perfectly reasonable that not having a 100% healthy front shoulder would do a number on your ability to swing a bat when the goal is hitting baseballs thrown by Major League pitchers. I mean, that's a hard enough thing to do when everything is working right.
What About 2022?
Like it or not, fantasy baseball is largely about guesswork. What we have here is a guy that was among the best hitters in the game in 2019 at a very young age, who fell completely flat the next two seasons. That does not make a ton of sense. Maybe the shoulder stuff was just noise, just a cop-out excuse the Dodgers used, but it seems more likely to me that it really did factor in. We have to pick a side here, and I would much rather be on the side of putting too much blame on a bum shoulder than not enough blame on it.
So that leaves us with a 26-year-old former MVP on the league's best offense that is currently being drafted outside of the top- 100 picks. That upside at that pick seems to justify the risk. By selecting Bellinger, you are betting on his shoulder being better in 2022 than in 2021, which is quite likely but not a guarantee. I would imagine that six months off and a year and a half removed from the surgery should set him up pretty well for the 2022 season.
Bellinger will be one of the most interesting players to watch in Spring Training to see how hard he is hitting the ball. If we see him come out and pop a few balls at 113 miles per hour, we'll be able to feel pretty confident about his health. For now, I'm drafting Bellinger and hoping for the best.
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