Dodgers: Cody Bellinger Helps Pace the Early NL MVP Race

The Dodgers were expecting a big season from Cody Bellinger after a sophomore slump.  However, nobody saw this type of historic start coming from Cody.

Any other season, Christian Yelich would be running away with his second straight National League MVP award.  However, this is not any other season and Cody Bellinger has matched him home run for home run.  During their series in Milwaukee, Bellinger even robbed Yelich of a home run or he would lead the NL.

Entering today, Cody and Christian both have fourteen home runs, which is tied for the most home runs before the month of May.  Both the Dodgers and Brewers play today so Bellinger and Yelich will each have two games to try and set a new MLB record for home runs before the month of May.

Yelich has better odds since he is playing at home where all but one of his home runs have come.  Bellinger will be playing in San Francisco where depending on how dense the fog is, it can be a pretty tough place to hit home runs.  If Cody is going to set the record, he will likely need to pull a page out of Barry Bonds’ book and come up with a splash hit into the bay beyond right field.

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Outside of stolen bases where Yelich leads by one, Cody Bellinger leads him in hits, runs batted in, average, on-base percentage, runs scored, and OPS.  This season, Cody has looked like a totally different player seeing a noticeable drop in strikeouts.  Last season, he struck out 23.9% of his at-bats and so far in 2019, he has cut that in half striking out just 10.8% of the time.

Not only has Bellinger put the ball in play more, but he has hit the ball much harder when he does put balls in play.  His hard-hit rate is 53.9% up thirteen percent from the 2018 season.  Cody has also hit more line drives and fewer ground balls, increasing his line drive rate to 34.8% which is up fifteen percent from last year and he slashed his ground ball percentage down ten percentage points.

Fewer strikeouts, more contact, and harder hit balls have helped turn Cody Bellinger into the juggernaut offensive machine he has been to begin the 2019 season. Outside of Clayton Kershaw winning the NL MVP award in 2014, the last non-pitcher to win MVP for the Dodgers was Kirk Gibson in 1988.  Cody Bellinger has a chance to change that this year, along with ending another drought that has been running since 1988, a title drought.