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Cody Bellinger's 5 most unforgettable moments with the Dodgers
Cody Bellinger's Los Angeles Dodgers career is officially over and it still does not feel real. It was just yesterday that Bellinger was a rookie on the 2017 pennant-winning team with two decades of Dodgers baseball ahead of him.
Instead, Bellinger witnessed a fall from grace that led to the Dodgers non-tendering him. This opened the door for Bellinger to sign a one-year prove-it deal with the Chicago Cubs, ending his Dodgers career with a whimper.
While his career in LA did not go as planned, Bellinger will still go down as one of the most memorable players to put on the Dodger blue. He had plenty of great moments in LA, but there are five, in particular, that stand out above the rest.
Cody Bellinger's 5 most unforgettable moments with the Dodgers
5. Absolute Madness
Bellinger hit multiple walk-offs in the regular season that could have snagged the five spot on this list, but this moment holds a special place in Dodgers fans' hearts. Bellinger wasn't even the one that delivered the final game-winning hit but his role in this moment, as a young rookie, was the start of a special Dodgers career for the outfielder.
Bellinger was playing in just his fifth game on the big-league club after Joc Pederson suffered an injury against the San Francisco Giants. In this particular game against the Philadelphia Phillies, Bellinger slugged his first of 152 home runs for the Dodgers and he did not stop there.
Down 5-2 in the bottom of the ninth, the magical 2017 Dodgers put together perhaps their best come-from-behind win of the season. Kickstarted by Yasiel Puig, the Dodgers hit back-to-back-to-back home runs to tie the game in the ninth. Adrian Gonzalez would deliver the game-winning hit with a poke to left field to complete the ninth-inning comeback.
Bellinger hit the second of those three home runs — a towering drive that clanked off the right-field foul pole — for his second home run of the game. A pinch-hitting Justin Turner banged the third home run in a row, giving Joe Davis his first of many iconic calls with the Dodgers. Absolute madness.
4. Cody Bellinger's NLDS home run robbery
The 2020 World Series run was truly a special one for the Los Angeles Dodgers and Cody Bellinger played a big part of it. This is not his only moment to be included on this list from those playoffs, as it was just an appetizer for what would come later on.
Before the Padres ripped out the Dodgers’ hearts in the 2022 NLDS, they squared off against the Boys in Blue in the 2020 NLDS in their first playoff trip in 14 years. The Dodgers were the ones that ripped out the Padres’ hearts and Bellinger delivered the most iconic play of the series.
With Brusdar Graterol on the mound, a pre-suspended Fernando Tatis Jr. launched a long fly ball to deep center field. At either Dodger Stadium or Petco Park, it likely would have been a no-doubt home run. But this game was played at Globe Life Park in Arlington, giving Bellinger just enough room to roam back to the wall and make a leaping catch, robbing Tatis of the homer.
This killed the Padres’ momentum as Graterol flung his glove into the air and got into a shouting match with Manny Machado. The Dodgers would make quick work of the Padres in that series, kickstarting a truly magical run to the team’s first championship since 1988.
If Bellinger doesn't make that catch, who knows the ripple effects it would've had on the rest of the series. The 2020 NLDS could have looked strikingly similar to the 2022 NLDS.
3. Cody Bellinger's 2018 NLCS heroics
Bellinger’s overall offensive numbers from the 2018 NLCS against the Milwaukee Brewers were not great. He barely hit .200 and only belted one home run in the entire seven-game series. However, he was still named the NLCS MVP for his heroics in multiple games.
In classic Bellinger fashion, he picked the biggest spots of the entire series to come up with the most clutch possible plays. While the Dodgers didn't get the job done in the World Series thanks to a painful Dave Roberts mistake, the team wouldn't have even gotten that far if it wasn't for Bellinger.
Down 2-1 at Dodger Stadium, Bellinger swung the entire series with his play in extra innings. Lorenzo Cain led off the top of the 10th with a flare into the right-center gap that likely would have resulted in a double with his speed. Instead of falling for the hit, Cain’s ball was tracked down by Bellinger, who made an incredible slip-and-slide diving catch to give Kenley Jansen the first out of the inning.
Bellinger came up to the plate three innings later in the bottom of the 13th with two outs and Manny Machado on second base. He stuck with a 3-2 breaking ball and drove it past a diving Jesus Aguliar at first base. Machado came home and just beat out a throw from Christian Yelich, evening up the series at two games apiece.
Without Bellinger’s Game 4 heroics, the team would've been down 3-1 and likely wouldn't have made it to a Game 7. Instead, they did, where Bellinger blasted a two-run home run in the top of the second to give LA a 2-1 lead, a game they would win 5-1.
2. Cody Bellinger's historic start to MVP season
Many fans will remember the extreme lows of Cody Bellinger at the end of his Dodgers tenure. There's no way around it: Bellinger was downright awful in his last two years with the team and was one of the worst hitters in the entire league. If James Outman comes in and hits well, fans are quickly going to forget about their former beloved center fielder.
That's not completely fair to Bellinger, who had some of the highest highs with the Dodgers as well. In 2017 he set the record for the most home runs by a rookie in National League history. That record would quickly be broken by Pete Alonso, but it was a sign of things to come for Bellinger in the future.
That future was the 2019 season, which is legitimately one of the most impressive MVP seasons in recent MLB history. Bellinger slugged 47 home runs, drove in 115 RBIs, and hit .305 on the year. Only 42 players in MLB history have had a season in which they hit 45+ home runs, drove in 115+ RBIs and hit .300 or better. Only 13 have done it while stealing 15 bases. Bellinger is one of them.
His season as a whole was on a historic level, but even more historic was his first month of the season. Bellinger started to fade towards the end of the 2019 season but was held up by one of the hottest starts to a season in MLB history.
In his first 30 games in 2019, Bellinger hit 14 home runs, drove in 37 RBIs, and was hitting .434 with a 1.414 OPS. At that point, Bellinger was on a 162-game pace of 75 home runs, 200 RBIs and 248 hits. Nobody thought he would hit those paces, obviously, but that's absolutely incredible in hindsight.
Only three other players in MLB history started a season with 14+ home runs and a .400+ batting average through 30 games: Josh Hamilton (2012), Mickey Mantle (1956) and Willie Mays (1964). Bellinger had a higher OPS than all three of those players after 30 games.
1. Cody Bellinger's game-winning home run in Game 7 of the 2020 NLCS
Many look at this as Bellinger’s last great moment with the Dodgers. Sure, he had some solid regular-season moments after this in 2021 and 2022 but with such poor play, this home run in the 2020 NLCS against the Atlanta Braves will be the highlight that every Dodger fan remembers.
And it might have caused the start of Bellinger’s decline into being one of the worst hitters in the sport. After the home run, Bellinger popped his shoulder out of place celebrating with Enrique Hernandez. It's unclear if that's what truly caused his rapid decline, but Bellinger was never the same after that moment.
Every Dodger fan would trade Bellinger’s decline for this home run, though. Without it, the Dodgers may not have gotten into the World Series and beaten the Tampa Bay Rays. Nothing is guaranteed in this sport, so while it wasn't a walk-off home run, we can absolutely still attribute the win to Bellinger’s go-ahead home run.
Hernandez was the hero the prior inning, sending a 2-2 fastball deep into the left-field seats to tie the game at three. In the eighth pitch of Bellinger’s at-bat, he lifted a high fastball to right field for a no-doubt, go-ahead home run. Julio Urias shut the Braves down after that, eventually leading to the Dodgers’ first World Series since 1988.
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Game 7 of the 2020 NLCS, and the Dodgers’ 3-1 comeback as a whole, will go down forever as one of the greatest playoff moments in franchise history. Cody Bellinger is a central part of that and it should never be forgotten.