As Before, So Again: Cody Bellinger Is a Yankee

Our long national nightmare is over. After weeks of back and forth between Cody Bellinger and the New York Yankees, it’s official: He’s staying in the Bronx. The two sides have agreed to a five-year, $162.5 million deal with opt outs after the second and third seasons, a $20 million signing bonus, and a full no-trade clause, as first reported by Jeff Passan.

This fit was so obvious that it almost had to happen. The Yankees need offense, and they’d prefer it to come in the form of a left-handed outfielder who can cover center field in a pinch. They’re already familiar with Bellinger, who just put up a 5-WAR season in pinstripes. No other teams needed this exact type of player as much, at this current moment, as they did. Likewise, Bellinger was probably going to have to sign with the Yankees to get the deal he wanted. Now that that foregone conclusion has been reached, let’s unpack how this all fits together.

This contract is the culmination of a long, decorated career that was conspicuously lacking in free agency appeal. Bellinger burst onto the scene in 2017 with 39 homers for the Dodgers, taking Rookie of the Year honors in the process. He then went fully supersonic in the homer-happy 2019 season, with the rocket ball propelling him to 47 homers, a 161 wRC+, and NL MVP honors. Disaster struck in the 2020 World Series, however. Bellinger dislocated his shoulder celebrating a home run, and his performance fell off a cliff immediately after.

For the next two seasons, Bellinger managed only 29 combined homers and a 69 wRC+. Far from his MVP heights, he was essentially replacement level (0.4 WAR over 900 PA), leading the Dodgers to non-tender him rather than pay him the roughly $20 million he was likely to earn in his final season of arbitration. He signed a one-year deal with the Cubs, bounced back with a 135 wRC+ and 4.4 WAR in 130 games, then hit free agency looking for his taste of the good life.

The market didn’t see it that way, and in the end, Bellinger snagged a pillow contract of sorts, a three-year deal with Chicago that had opt outs after each season. A middling 2024 led him to decline his first opt out, and the cost-conscious Cubs then sent him to the Yankees for a pittance (swingman Cody Poteet). That brings us to Bellinger’s superlative 2025, and his long-awaited big free agency payday.

I haven’t spent too long describing the specifics of Bellinger’s game because you probably already know it, what with him being one of the more famous players of the last decade and all, but a refresher is still in order. Defensively, he can handle all three outfield positions, and he’s meaningfully above average in a corner. He’s also an incredible first baseman, though his defensive talents are wasted there and he only plays there sporadically these days.

We don’t have to wonder what Bellinger will look like in Yankee Stadium because we already know it’s a match made in heaven. His lift-and-pull approach isn’t only a product of the snug right field dimensions, but the match of swing and park is about as good as it gets. Of Bellinger’s 29 homers in 2025, 27 were pulled, and the other two were hit to right-center. He hasn’t always been so geared to pull, but from the start of his career, he’s looked to elevate and celebrate, and now he’s going to keep doing so in one of the best places for lefties with that profile.

Thanks to that profile, Bellinger’s slow swing speed is a feature and not a bug. He’s blessed with a good batting eye and outrageous contact skills. His 90.6% zone contact rate in 2025 was 26th in the majors, the domain of slap hitters and their ilk. But his contact is lifted – he had the 10th-highest fly ball rate in baseball, with a quarter of his batted balls pulled in the air. That’s not quite Isaac Paredes territory, but it’s in the top 15% of all major leaguers. By making a ton of contact and aiming that contact at dangerous angles, Bellinger produces power numbers out of whack with what you’d expect from a 20th-percentile bat speed guy who strikes out at a minuscule 13.7% clip. He might not hit the ball all that hard, but swinging less viciously helps him make more contact, and the natural uppercut shape of his swing handles the rest.

This approach probably precludes him from being a high-BABIP type, but honestly, who cares? Between walking a lot, rarely striking out, and clobbering 30 bombs a season, you can produce a lot of offensive value without seeing-eye singles. The Bellinger approach is an excellent way to make the most of his post-injury skill set; his average exit velocities early in his career were consistently at the top of the league, but he’s been squarely below average now for three straight years. By leaning into that, he’s found a wonderful second act.

Add it all up, and you get a wonderful running mate for Aaron Judge. Bellinger was a stalwart at the top of the Yankees lineup in 2025, and he’s going to play that role again for at least the next two years. He’s a great hedge against one of the most common strategies for neutralizing Judge. The Yankees like to surround Judge with a gob of lefties, putting opponents in a bind of giving Judge a good platoon matchup or letting everyone around him eat. The easy solution to this is to bring in a lefty reliever and then intentionally walk Judge, getting good matchups against everyone else. But Bellinger has near-neutral splits for his career, and his power-and-walks game plays incredibly well with runners on base. It’s not the easy matchup pitchers would hope for after handing their opponent a free runner.

Defensively, Bellinger’s ability to play multiple spots is just what the Yankees need. I had him second on my Fielding Bible ballot in left field, the position where he played the most innings. He was also great in right, as the Yankees gave Judge 56 games of DHing, particularly when Giancarlo Stanton was on the IL. Finally, he was neutral in center backing up Trent Grisham (who will also return after accepting the team’s qualifying offer). He played 300 innings or more at each position. That kind of versatility let the Yankees toggle between their best offensive lineup and various other permutations with impunity, sliding Bellinger around to wherever there was a hole without worrying about defense.

This contract is more than I predicted for Bellinger coming into the winter, and that’s before you add in the value of the opt outs. I think that agent Scott Boras played this one incredibly well. As I’ve mentioned, the Yankees needed a very particular archetype of player. There aren’t a lot of other guys like Bellinger out there, certainly not ones available in free agency. Kyle Tucker might fit the bill, but it didn’t feel like Brian Cashman was interested in wading into that particular fray, and you don’t really want Tucker to spot in center anyhow. Defensive versatility along with offensive firepower is mostly the domain of young, untouchable franchise cornerstones these days. Kudos to Boras for understanding that Bellinger’s value exceeded a linear estimation of his contributions as a result, and sticking to his convictions until the deal was done.

About those opt outs: I don’t think they’re that likely to be exercised. ZiPS has Bellinger down for a gentle decline over the five seasons he’s under contract:

Plugging those values into a homemade calculator to estimate the likelihood of an opt out, I get only a 26% chance that either option will be exercised. The reason is straightforward: The three years remaining on Bellinger’s deal after the first opt out are his age-32, -33, and -34 seasons. Not many 32-year-olds sign three-year, $82.5 million deals in the first place. Getting more than that is only likely if Bellinger is markedly better than expected over the next two years. It’s not that it can’t happen, but this isn’t a pillow contract with some longevity built in as a fallback; it’s a five-year deal with a tiny escape valve for Bellinger if he’s really good.

I’d still be incredibly satisfied with this deal if I were Bellinger. Combine this and the two years of his last contract that he played out before returning to free agency, and it’s like he signed a seven-year, $217 million deal, the kind of blockbuster contract that he was angling for all along. By betting on himself via the pillow contract with opt outs, he didn’t even sacrifice much in average annual value to get here, because he got a nice $27.5 million AAV on that short-term contract, barely lower than the average value of this deal. If you’re looking for an example of what happens when players take short-term deals and then do well, this is a perfect one.

Is it an “overpay”? Maybe to a model. ZiPS would offer Bellinger $139 million over five years with these projections, incredibly close to my $140 million estimate. But the Yankees aren’t a model; they’re a major league baseball team that needed a slugging lefty outfielder. Playing cute in the negotiations, trying to save a few bucks, carried meaningful downside risk. Outfitting Judge with a less-than-spectacular supporting cast, while he stacks 10-WAR seasons like firewood, is front office malpractice. The Judge deal has been such a huge win for the Yankees that they should be tripping over themselves to make small overpays to get their preferred supporting cast, and this is a wonderful example of that.