Rookie marks in Bellinger’s reach
Dodgers slugger shows no signs of slowing down
Cody Bellinger secured his spot in home run history with two more mighty swings Monday night. Now the question is how high the Los Angeles Dodgers’ 22-year-old slugger can fly.
Bellinger equaled New York Yankees slugger Gary Sanchez and 1930s All-Star Wally Berger by hitting his 20th home run in his 51st career game. With that bit of round-number history tucked away, Bellinger did them one better by smacking his 21st home run in his next at-bat, putting him alone on that mountaintop.
It is a startling but not altogether unforeseen sprint from the blocks for Bellinger, 21. After all, he produced 29- and 30-home run seasons in the minors and made his major league debut during a season in which home runs are flying out at a record pace.
Still, for a player to debut on April 25 and lead the National League in home runs less than two months later is unlikely. So what now for Bellinger?
Here’s a peek at a few factors that might frame what comes next.
Baseball’s about to get harder
At this point, woe unto the pundit who dares put a ceiling on Bellinger. That said, it’s inevitable pitchers will approach Bellinger far differently — and he will most certainly have to adjust.
Bellinger strikes out a fair amount — 65 times in 215 plate appearances, which translates to 181 over a full season. But that’s a fairly typical total for the modern power hitter in this big-swing, big-reward era.
And while the book has been out on Bellinger for a while, his strike-zone control has remained solid. Bellinger has swung at 29.2% of pitches he has seen outside the strike zone, according to Fan-Graphs. That’s in line with the league average of 30.1%.
Yet pitchers have fed Bellinger fastballs 57% of the time, a diet that puts him at the table with older sluggers such as Robinson Cano and Miguel Cabrera and speedsters such as Billy Hamilton and Jonathan Villar. Count on that number dipping below 50% — Aaron Judge’s neighborhood — as pitchers adjust to the amount of damage Bellinger can wreak and feed him more breaking balls.
It will be incumbent on Bellinger to counter — and likely get even more disciplined.
Is there a rookie wall?
More commonly associated with the NBA, a rookie’s first full season is certainly challenging in the big leagues, as players go from a max of 140 games to a full 162. Sanchez’s experience doesn’t provide a solid comparison, as his record-tying 20th homer came four games before the 2016 season ended.
Eighty-seven years ago, Berger reached the 20-homer plateau with a two-homer performance on June 20 at Wrigley Field. Then came a lull — just two homers in his next 17 games and five in July. But Berger, 24, eventually slugged a rookie-record 38 home runs, his best season in an 11-year career that included 242 long balls.
Bellinger will enjoy the ballplayer’s modern trappings that Berger did not but also will contend with a multitude of pitches, cross-country travel and considerable media scrutiny.
That might crest at next month’s All- Star Game, where the baseball world hopes Bellinger will square off with Judge in the Home Run Derby.
While the Derby won’t wreck your swing, it can certainly create fatigue for a player not yet used to the grind. Assuming Bellinger stays healthy, the arc of his rookie season — the late start, the bushel of early home runs, the stretch drive — will make an interesting case study.
What’s next in the record book?
Berger’s rookie home run record stood for 47 years, until Mark McGwire slugged 49 homers for the 1987 Oakland Athletics. This is one milestone that Bellinger’s late start should doom him. Or will it? Through 71 team games, McGwire had 22 home runs — just one more than Bellinger at this stage.
But Big Mac was about to binge: a three-homer game followed by a two-homer game, a burst that enabled a more measured pace to 49 homers.
One tie that binds McGwire and Bellinger: Their rookie seasons came in what are considered outlier seasons for power production.
Major leaguers set a record for home runs in 1986 and then boosted that mark by 20% in ’87, led by McGwire and the Chicago Cubs’ Andre Dawson slugging 49.
Thirty years later, we’re witnessing another all-time home run season — and more rumblings that a rabbit ball might be the culprit. Regardless, Bellinger is homering every 9.2 at-bats — or twice as often as Judge’s 21.0 mark.
If McGwire is out of reach, Hall of Famer Mike Piazza certainly is not. Bellinger has already equaled Piazza’s Dodgers rookie record of five multihomer games. And Piazza’s franchise record of 35 rookie home runs seems a decent bet to fall.
So what’s the ceiling?
Berger never did exceed his rookie home run total. McGwire went nearly a decade before doing so, hitting 52 home runs in the midst of baseball’s steroid era, to which McGwire ultimately admitted he was a participant.
It’s early, but Bellinger certainly looks like anything but a fluke.
At 21, he has several years of growth and plenty of room to add muscle to his 6-4, 210-pound frame. His physique almost seems an asset now — long limbs that can whip the bat through the zone quickly and put a charge into pitches on the inner half. Still, a little extra meat on the bones won’t hurt.
Among major leaguers with at least 100 batted-ball events, Bellinger ranks fifth with a 10.7% “barrel percentage,” a Statcast metric that uses exit velocity and launch angle to determine wellstruck balls, or “barrels.” Almost all of the players in Bellinger’s rent district — save, once again, for Judge — are considerably older, stronger, more experienced.
It’s not so simple to project that Bellinger’s power proficiency will rise as he matures physically and as a hitter. Then again, it seems wise not to place any limits on Bellinger until his performance suggests we do so.