NEWSLETTER
What a news drop to wake up to on a Sunday morning. WOW. Jeff Passan just dropping the major Cody Bellinger report in the middle of the freaking night.
The Chicago Cubs and Cody Bellinger have agreed to a new three-year, $80 million deal with multiple opt-outs:
After months and months of feeling inevitable in some way, the two sides do get back together on a new contract. And after reports of Bellinger and his agent Scott Boras pushing for a deal north of $200 million, that deal never materialized, and Jed Hoyer’s patience pays off.
The contract, instead, is a version of the Carlos Correa deal that Boras negotiated with the Twins a couple years ago in somewhat similar circumstances. Bellinger gets the backstop of $80 million just in case things go very sideways in 2024 or 2025, but he gets the chance to go right back out into free agency – unattached to draft pick compensation, by the way – after 2024 if he shows that his resurgence in 2023 was repeatable.
Bellinger, 28, was a superstar of the highest order just a few years ago, but shoulder and leg injuries turned his 2021 and 2022 seasons into such deep nightmares that the Dodgers non-tendered him in advance of 2023. The Cubs signed him to a one-year deal, gave him a full-time shot to rebound, and all Bellinger did was hit .307/.356/.525/134 wRC+, while playing great defense in both center field and at first base, and win NL Comeback Player of the Year. Not a bad one-year deal.
And it could now be another one-year deal for Cody Bellinger and the Cubs, if everything goes well again. There are questions about just how repeatable Bellinger’s new higher-contact style will be, whether he’ll need more barrels to achieve the same level of offensive success, and whether his two-strike success, in particular, was entirely attributable to skill rather than luck. But if he has a good season, he’ll still be shy of 30 years old, with another chance to get a nine-figure deal. I would think he’ll take it.
If it goes that way, I think the Cubs would be all too happy. They would’ve gotten another great season out of Bellinger in a year when they really need it, and they wouldn’t have been locked into a long-term contract at a spot where they have soon arriving so many young options internally.
In other words, the absolute dream outcome all along for the Cubs was Bellinger coming back to the Cubs for one more excellent season in 2024. It could wind up a dream outcome for him, too, if his market is improved in a way it wasn’t this time around.
But that’s a question for many months from now. The focus today, and in Spring Training, will be how the return of Cody Bellinger solidifies a lineup that desperately needed another steady, middle-of-the-order bat. You can say he is not an “addition” to the lineup, since he’s returning from 2023, but somehow the lineup with Cody in it does look better than what the Cubs were sporting last year. Maybe it’s because I’m completely sold on Christopher Morel as an offensive stud now, or maybe it’s because I really like Michael Busch, or maybe it’s because we’ve seen just how good Seiya Suzuki can be in MLB. But the Cubs have the bats to be competitive now. I believe that.
Much more on the roster-related fallout of Bellinger’s return here.
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