{"id":293579,"date":"2025-10-11T03:02:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-11T03:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/293579\/"},"modified":"2025-10-11T03:02:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-11T03:02:10","slug":"cody-bellinger-to-opt-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/293579\/","title":{"rendered":"Cody Bellinger To Opt Out"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cody Bellinger<\/a><\/strong> will decline his $25MM player option and become a free agent, reports Jorge Castillo of ESPN<\/a>. That was never much in doubt, as the outfielder will hit the open market after one strong season with the Yankees. He\u2019ll collect a $5MM buyout, half of which will be paid by the Cubs.<\/p>\n

The Yanks had been tied to Bellinger in free agency and trade rumors for years. That finally came to fruition last offseason with what amounted to a salary dump trade with Chicago. Bellinger was coming off a relative down \u201924 season (.266\/.325\/.426) and passed on his first opt-out chance in his three-year deal. The Cubs pulled off the Kyle Tucker<\/a><\/strong> trade to add a needed impact bat in the middle of the order. That left them without an outfield spot for Bellinger, so they sent him to the Yankees for essentially no return.<\/p>\n

New York absorbed $47.5MM of the $52.5MM remaining on Bellinger\u2019s contract. The Cubs paid $2.5MM of his $27.5MM salary this season and are responsible for the other $2.5MM on the buyout. The Yankees wound up paying $27.5MM for one year \u2014 $25MM in salary and the remaining half of the buyout.<\/p>\n

That proved a worthwhile investment even if the team had a disappointing exit in this week\u2019s Division Series. Bellinger played about as well as could be expected. He hit .272\/.334\/.480 across 656 plate appearances. Bellinger hit 29 homers, his best single-season total since he connected on 47 longballs during his 2019 MVP season. He swiped 13 bases while cutting his strikeout rate to a career-low 13.7% clip.<\/p>\n

Bellinger\u2019s left-handed swing seemed tailor made for Yankee Stadium. He hit 18 homers with a .302\/.365\/.544 batting line at home. His road numbers were essentially league average, as he slashed .241\/.301\/.414 outside the Bronx. That could give some teams pause about how the bat will play if he signs elsewhere. Bellinger didn\u2019t find the robust market he wanted when he was a free agent during the 2023-24 offseason, nor was there significant trade interest when the Cubs shopped him last winter. If there were, the Yankees would\u2019ve needed to give up more than journeyman righty Cody Poteet<\/a><\/strong> to acquire him.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s largely because of Bellinger\u2019s pedestrian batted ball metrics. He has been in the bottom quarter of the league in average exit velocity in each of the past three seasons. He doesn\u2019t have a ton of bat speed and certainly doesn\u2019t hit the ball as hard as he did early in his career \u2014 before he suffered a shoulder injury that tanked his numbers between 2021-22. Bellinger has compensated for the drop in bat speed by cutting his strikeouts every season, and he carries a .281\/.338\/.477 line in nearly 1800 plate appearances over the past three years.<\/p>\n

Bellinger returns to the market a few months after his 30th birthday. He\u2019s young enough to seek a five- or six-year deal. Bellinger is a better defender and arguably superior all-around hitter than Anthony Santander<\/a><\/strong>, who signed for five years with a net present value around $69MM last winter. There\u2019s little reason Bellinger shouldn\u2019t beat that contract fairly handily. It wouldn\u2019t at all be surprising if his camp starts out with an asking price in the $100-150MM range.<\/p>\n

The Cubs issued Bellinger a qualifying offer after the 2023 season. That makes him ineligible to receive a QO for the rest of his career. The Yankees would not receive any kind of compensation if he signs elsewhere, nor would another team forfeit a pick. New York can and probably will make a qualifying offer, which would land around $22MM, to Trent Grisham<\/a><\/strong>. They\u2019re also set to have\u00a0Luke Weaver<\/a><\/strong>,\u00a0Devin Williams<\/a><\/strong>,\u00a0Paul Goldschmidt<\/a><\/strong> and a handful of role players hit the open market. Williams entered the season as a qualifying offer candidate, but the Yankees are probably content to let him move on after an uneven season in pinstripes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cody Bellinger will decline his $25MM player option and become a free agent, reports Jorge Castillo of ESPN.…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":293580,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[10624,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-293579","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-cody-bellinger","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115353311206492401","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293579\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/293580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}