Jesse joined ESPN Chicago in September 2009 and covers MLB for ESPN.com.
IT WAS AN early Saturday morning at Wrigley Field. Most of the Chicago Cubs‘ roster wouldn’t arrive for their game against the Kansas City Royals for hours. But at 8:30 a.m., about six hours before first pitch, Cubs center fielder/first baseman Cody Bellinger and hitting coach Dustin Kelly took the field.
Bellinger had been unhappy with his approach at the plate in the previous game, a 4-3 defeat. He went 0-for-5 with a strikeout, uncharacteristically swinging at pitches outside the strike zone. And so he and Kelly went through an extended batting practice, working on reading pitches and keeping his hip from flying open.
The work paid off. Later that day, Bellinger had his 17th career multihomer game and surpassed the 20 home run mark in a season for the first time since 2019 — the year he won the National League Most Valuable Player Award for the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Back then, Bellinger’s career arc had him on track to be one of the great players of his era. A Rookie of the Year Award in 2017 was followed by the MVP in 2019 — which came with a Gold Glove, as well. In between, he played in 162 games in 2018. Durable and productive, at one of the game’s premier positions, the 6-foot-4 lefty swinger was also working his way toward a massive payday.
And then he dislocated his right shoulder celebrating a home run in the 2020 National League Championship Series while leaping into the air to meet teammate Enrique Hernandez for a forearm bash. And everything changed.
“I came back as soon as possible from it, not knowing anything,” Bellinger told ESPN. “I never dealt with an injury. I never thought how surgery would really affect me. Didn’t even know that it did until later on in that year (2021) when I did some one-hand drills. I was like, ‘I had no idea where anything [with the shoulder] is right now.'”
“This is about barrel control,” his agent, Scott Boras, said in a phone interview. “You have to have the strength to have the barrel control in your front arm. He couldn’t keep his barrel on plane. He couldn’t extend it. He just couldn’t execute the normal, Cody Bellinger swing.”
Some of the circumstances were out of his control. The pandemic got in the way of his recovery from the shoulder surgery in 2020.
“Then we had a lockout and I couldn’t work with people that I wanted to work with,” Bellinger said. “I never got to get back to who I was until this offseason.”
As a result, his numbers plummeted; Bellinger compiled an OPS+ of just 44 in 2021 and 81 in 2022. He hit .165 in 95 games in 2021, limited by the shoulder and a foot injury. His .210 batting average in 2022 came with just 38 walks and 150 strikeouts. His days in Los Angeles were done. He wasn’t offered a contract for the 2023 season.
“With an actual injury, it can be tough, because it can feel like you’re putting all your energy into just going out to play,” Cubs teammate Dansby Swanson said. “It can rob you of your joy of playing and being present, in the moment.”
Swanson speaks from experience. In 2018, an injured wrist impacted him early and late that season, forcing him to miss the playoffs.
“Mentally, it’s a grind,” he said. “Without knowing it you may be protecting yourself a little bit. ‘I’m trying to do this with my swing, but my body is not allowing me to do what I want to do.'”
It’s the same experience Bellinger had — but this past offseason was a difference-maker. He was healthy and more relaxed, working out with family, including dad Clay, a former big league player.
“I was hitting at my high school with him,” the younger Bellinger said. “Just having fun on the baseball field, remembering again it’s just a game. It’s the same game I was playing since I was 7.”
Bellinger, finally healthy, has found his stroke again in Chicago. He has been so good the surprising Cubs elected not to deal him at the trade deadline despite some high-profile suitors — and instead he has become the face of an unlikely contender. And though his immediate focus is a wild-card spot, if not an NL Central title, Bellinger will become one of baseball’s most sought-after free agents after the season.
NO ONE IN Bellinger’s orbit was shocked when the Dodgers non-tendered him. Even with two down seasons, the arbitration system still meant a hefty salary for 2023, and there were lingering question marks about his game. Could a team contending for a World Series afford the gamble?
“The point I made to [Cubs president] Jed [Hoyer] and others is when a player has 1.000 OPS and .900 OPS seasons, and never below .800, and is ROY/MVP all in three years, then has a .550 and .650 OPS, it’s obviously not skill,” Boras said. “It’s lack of shoulder strength due to surgery.
“Jed agreed. A healthy Cody is the five-tool MVP Cody.”
The Cubs signed him to a one-year, $17.5 million contract in mid-December. They were in the middle of a retooling phase and could afford whatever Bellinger could give them. If he was good, and it helped them win, great. If he was good, but the team wasn’t, they could try flipping him in July. If Bellinger couldn’t return to form, Hoyer could fall back on an old baseball adage: There are no bad one-year deals. Bellinger would move on in 2024, making room for top prospect Pete Crow-Armstrong.
Instead, Bellinger has been great, alternating between center field and first base, playing elite defense while putting up big offensive numbers. His .924 OPS ranks fifth in the NL, as does his WRC+ of 145. He’s not likely to win the NL MVP but he’ll get plenty of down-ballot votes. And he has easily been the MVP of the Cubs, who went 11-15 for exactly a month without him in the lineup because of a knee injury. More telling, their team OPS dropped more than 100 points without him, from .763 to .651.
Bellinger’s average exit velocity (87.2 mph) is actually the lowest of his career, and there’s no one in MLB with a bigger difference between his expected (.266) and actual (.321) batting average. His .333 batting average on balls in play helps in that department, but he gets credit for making more contact than ever. His strikeout percentage has crashed, from a career-high 27.3% last season to a career-low 15.7% this year.
“Being able to control the bat and hit more pitches,” Bellinger explained about what being healthy means. “It doesn’t have to be in one spot of the zone anymore. Able to consistently put my swing on the ball, and that creates results.”
His comeback began in January in those batting sessions with his father, then continued with Cubs hitting coaches with whom he had familiarity — former Dodgers coaches Kelly and Johnny Washington.
“It worked out that I lived super close to the spring complex [in Mesa, Arizona],” Bellinger said. “And I knew those guys. The transition was easy.”
Kelly was asked for some technical reasons for Bellinger finding his groove again, now that he’s healthy:
“A lot of it is setup,” Kelly explained. “He’s grounded in with his back leg a little bit more. He has a little more flex in his back hip. There’s a slight bend in his back knee. And he’s kind of set his hands slightly higher than they had been. We got him back up by his ear. It’s allowed him to set his line. When he’s lined up in the box and kind of gets that release point from the pitcher, he’s got a really good posture and line that he sticks to. I think that’s the feeling he’s been searching for.”
Getting his shoulder right and then his mechanics was half the battle. Baseball might be the only sport for which even stars need constant reassurance. Building up their hitters is also half the job for hitting coaches.
“The game will beat you up,” Kelly said. “We’re constantly reminding them you’re really good. There aren’t a lot of guys in this league that do what you do.
“[The pitcher’s] name doesn’t say Bellinger on the back of his jersey. Confidence is a big deal. We try to pump him up every so often.”
AS BELLINGER FOUND success in the first half, the Cubs were still figuring out the course of their season. Would they be contending at the trade deadline — or offloading? Chicago’s front office executed resets in each of the past two seasons, taking criticism for trading away 2016 World Series stars Javy Baez, Kris Bryant and Anthony Rizzo. Those deals look brilliant in hindsight.
For Bellinger’s part, he understood what he was getting into when he signed: “I knew that getting traded was a possibility. You can’t think that far ahead.”
As the trade deadline shook out, with few hitters on the market, it became more clear the Cubs would not only save salary by moving Bellinger, but also likely get a haul in return.
“He was a popular guy,” Hoyer said. “Clearly, he was going to be the best bat available. A lot of teams checked in on him.”
None were ready to be more aggressive than the New York Yankees, according to sources familiar with the situation. But as the days to the deadline ticked down, the Cubs kept on winning.
Scoring eight unanswered runs against the White Sox on July 26 after falling behind 7-2 secured one victory, then, two days later, a two-out, ninth-inning, over-the-wall catch by Mike Tauchman in St. Louis clinched another one. What was going to be a tough deadline strategy decision for Hoyer turned into an easy one: Serious offers for Bellinger, Marcus Stroman and others were never discussed.
“By the time we got to that point, it became obvious,” Hoyer said. “Teams were calling, saying, ‘You’re not selling. You guys are good, you guys are going to buy.’ People stopped taking us seriously as a seller.”
One scout following Bellinger joked, “He wasted my expense account, following this guy around.”
At this point, Hoyer was having daily conversations with ownership involving one simple question: Can the team compete for the playoffs if it adds instead of subtracts at the trade deadline?
“Over the course of those last two weeks of July, the answer kept coming back yes,” Cubs owner Tom Ricketts told ESPN. “We always have the ability to improve in the middle of the season. The players get to decide for us. If we play well enough to add, we do it. If we don’t, then we have to think about the future.
“This is Jed’s call. In the end, he’s responsible for the performance on the field, both the current season and future seasons, so it’s a tough spot to put him in, but that’s his responsibility. We talk every day, but thankfully the team played its way into being really comfortable [in the standings].”
But Ricketts wasn’t the only one Hoyer was hearing from. Swanson, on the IL because of a heel injury, inserted himself into the process, too.
“Dansby on the IL was a dangerous thing,” Hoyer said recently on ESPN 1000 in Chicago. “He was almost a front office member at that point because he was bored.
“He kept on saying, ‘We’re trying to build something and you can’t just snap your fingers and say now we’re winning.’ He wanted to keep pushing. ‘We may make it, we may not, but we’ll continue to have a winning culture.’ That was his point.
“He’s a better shortstop than a front office member, but he was really helpful in the process.”
On trade deadline day, Bellinger had three hits. He would add 16 more over the next 10 games helping the Cubs move further into wild-card contention. The NL Central title is also in reach. His 1.018 OPS in August is seventh in the NL. Barring a terrible September, Bellinger will enter free agency as the best player on the market this side of Shohei Ohtani. A package worth upward of $150 million to $200 million — or more — isn’t out of the question.
Bellinger is waving off questions about his future.
“There’s still so much to do,” he said. “We’re in the playoff hunt. It gives us purpose every day we come to the park.”
But when pushed about staying in Chicago — perhaps at first base as Crow-Armstrong matures to the big leagues — Bellinger added:
“Wrigley Field is an amazing place to play baseball. It’s cool coming here on the road, but it’s something different playing for the home team. It really is one of the best places to play.”
He noted that his former team seemed to visit Chicago early in the season, mostly in April and May, in recent years.
“I never saw the ivy,” Bellinger said with a smile. “It’s cool.”
ESPN baseball reporter. Covered the L.A. Rams for ESPN from 2016 to 2018 and the L.A. Angels for MLB.com from 2012 to 2016.
LOS ANGELES — Mookie Betts watched his drive sail over Dodger Stadium’s left-field fence late Friday night, and the emotions spilled out of him as if he had delivered a walk-off in October, not March. An emphatic raised finger was followed by a forceful fist bump, then an emphatic toss of his helmet and a deafening roar as he pranced toward his teammates at home plate.
Betts hadn’t just sent the Los Angeles Dodgers to an 8-5, come-from-behind victory over the Detroit Tigers on the same day their World Series rings were distributed. He hadn’t just given the Dodgers their first 4-0 start to a season since 1981. He had done so in the wake of a debilitating illness that caused him to shed almost 20 pounds and often made him wonder if he could muster the energy to provide moments like this.
“That was super special,” Betts said. “I know it sounds super selfish, but more for me. I was really proud of myself for coming in and playing underweight. Not that it’s a big deal playing underweight, but just the fight that I’ve kind of been through — the ups and downs, and the nights I’m just crying because I’m sick, and my wife’s there holding me. That’s where the emotion comes from.”
As the Dodgers prepared to fly to Japan and begin their season last week, Betts, who had spent the past four months pouring himself into the arduous task of becoming an everyday shortstop, struggled to keep food down.
He didn’t play in either of the team’s first two regular-season games against the Chicago Cubs from Tokyo Dome and was instead sent home early. He was supposed to play in the Dodgers’ exhibition opener against the Los Angeles Angels the ensuing Sunday, but he was a late scratch. Vomiting persisted. By that point, Betts’ weight had dropped from 175 pounds to 157.
But a day later, Betts started to turn a corner. He played five-and-a-half innings in the Dodgers’ exhibition finale Tuesday, then faced live pitching during the off day Wednesday. By the time the home opener came around roughly 24 hours later, Betts was back to feeling like his normal self. And on Friday, he made his presence felt.
With one out in the sixth, Betts recorded just the second hit off former Dodgers starter Jack Flaherty, then came around to score on Freddie Freeman‘s tying two-run homer. In the bottom of the eighth, he hit what would have been the game-winning home run had the Tigers not come back to tie the score in the top of the ninth.
In the 10th, Betts capped a five-run inning by coming up with runners on second and third and the score tied, working the count full against Beau Brieske, then turning on a low changeup and sending it 376 feet.
“Just given what he’s been under the last couple weeks, and still to go out there and be ready, and not be 100 percent, and still give us everything he has, coming up huge — I can’t say enough about Mookie,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said.
Betts is just the second player to hit multiple go-ahead homers in the eighth inning or later since the franchise moved to L.A. 67 years ago, according to ESPN Research. The other was Andre Ethier, who did the same on Aug. 2, 2015 — at about four inches taller and roughly 50 pounds heavier.
“I didn’t lose much strength, relative for my weight,” said Betts, who has since regained eight pounds but would still like to add another eight more. “I’m still pretty strong. But obviously as you add on more weight you can add on more strength. Right now I’m just having fun hitting 160-pound homers.”
Betts’ homer capped an epic two-day stretch for a Dodgers team that opened its season more than 5,000 miles away and is still coming off the high of its first full-season championship since 1988.
On Thursday, iconic rapper Ice Cube drove a Dodger Blue Chevy Bel-Air along Dodger Stadium’s foul territory with the World Series trophy strapped to the passenger seat, then brought it onto the field with the team lined up along the third-base line. On Friday, each of the Dodgers’ coaches and players walked onto a makeshift stage by the pitcher’s mound to receive gaudy championship rings decorated with 343 diamonds and 129 sapphires.
Amid all the pomp and circumstance, the 2025 Dodgers, seen as one of the most talented teams ever assembled, continued to win. They breezed past the Cubs in Japan without Betts and Freeman, then came back to the United States and snuck past the Tigers thanks in large part to a pitching staff that stranded 11 baserunners. On Friday, they fell behind twice and kept coming back.
“It kind of feels like we’re just picking up where we left off last year,” Dodgers third baseman Max Muncy said. “There’s still a whole lot of fight on this team. There’s no give up.”
LOS ANGELES — Shohei Ohtani and Clayton Kershaw joined their Los Angeles Dodgers teammates in sticking their fists out to show off their glittering World Series rings in a ceremony Friday night.
“There’s just a lot of excitement, probably more than I can ever recall with the Dodger fan base and our players,” manager Dave Roberts said before Los Angeles hosted the Detroit Tigers.
A choir in the left field pavilion sang “We Are the Champions” to open the ceremony hosted by actor Anthony Anderson.
“Nobody was like us last year and I have a feeling that nobody will be like us this year,” said Anderson, a Dodgers fan.
Ohtani, World Series MVP Freddie Freeman and Roberts received some of the loudest cheers walking a blue carpet to a circular stage between home plate and the mound.
Ohtani waved to the fans. When it was Freeman’s turn, they chanted “Freddie! Freddie!”
The stars were greeted with hugs from owner Mark Walter, president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman, president and CEO Stan Kasten and general manager Brandon Gomes, who presented the coaching staff and players with blue boxes.
An injured Kershaw didn’t pitch in the postseason last year, which culminated in the Dodgers’ five-game victory over the rival New York Yankees in the World Series. Ohtani’s Japanese countryman Yoshinobu Yamamoto and catcher Austin Barnes were busy warming up in the bullpen and had a clubhouse manager accept their rings.
The handcrafted rings by Jostens contain 14-karat yellow gold, diamonds and genuine sapphires.
Inside the box’s lid, a video plays highlights of the World Series. Using a specialized hinge mechanism, the top of the ring opens to reveal Dodger Stadium displayed in detail and features the Commissioner’s Trophy with one diamond to mark the victory. Eight diamonds represent each of the team’s World Series titles and the years 1883 and 2024 mark the franchise’s 142 seasons.
The left side of the ring top interior includes a piece from the bases used in the World Series. Encircling the base are 34 sapphires honoring the Dodgers pitcher Fernando Valenzuela, who died days before the World Series began.
In a personal touch, players’ signatures are on the interior palm of the ring.
Former Dodger Jack Flaherty started for the Tigers on Friday night, so he’ll receive his ring Saturday.
“We can go beat him up today and give him the ring tomorrow,” Roberts joked.
Flaherty, a native of nearby Burbank, California, started Game 1 of the National League Championship Series and Game 1 of the World Series, both at Dodger Stadium, where he attended games as a kid. He joined the Dodgers at last year’s trade deadline and provided stability to a starting rotation rocked by injuries.
“He was the right person at the right time for our club,” Roberts said. “He delivered.”
Utilityman Kiké Hernández got out of his sick bed to participate in the ceremony after missing the home opener a day earlier.
“He’s feeling much better,” Roberts said.
The team gathered behind the mound waiting for everyone to cross the stage and then posed for photos, smiling and admiring the bling on their fingers. A brass band broke into “Not Like Us.”
“I hope it fits,” Roberts said. “If it ends up on my pinkie, we’ll be in trouble.”
ESPN baseball reporter. Covered the Washington Wizards from 2014 to 2016 and the Washington Nationals from 2016 to 2018 for The Washington Post before covering the Los Angeles Dodgers and MLB for the Los Angeles Times from 2018 to 2024.
HOUSTON — It didn’t take long for Juan Soto to launch his first home run in a New York Mets uniform.
The star right fielder, playing in his second game with his new club, blasted a solo shot in the third inning against the Houston Astros in his sixth plate appearance of the season en route to a 3-1 win for the Mets at Daikin Park on Friday night.
“It’s always great to have the first one,” Soto said. “A lot of guys want to get the first one out of the way early and try to get that pressure off. So, I feel like it feels pretty good.”
Did he feel pressure before getting on the board in 2025?
“No,” Soto said.
The home run off Hunter Brown, one of the sport’s most talented young pitchers, was another example of Soto’s otherworldly ability to hit baseballs, one that stems from an extraordinary blend of patience, power and IQ — and convinced the Mets to give him a 15-year, $765 million contract this offseason.
The pitch from Brown was a 96 mph cutter up and in, and out of the strike zone. It was a two-strike offering meant to put away a hitter. It was a pitch that a small fraction of players, even at the highest level, can barrel. Soto, it turns out, resides in that small fraction.
Soto recognized the pitch and squared it up with a convicted swing. The ball traveled 390 feet at 107.3 mph over the right-field wall, ricocheting off the second deck’s facade and back onto the field, to give New York a 3-0 lead.
“Pretty incredible,” Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said. “Not easy to do. We’re talking about a pitch that’s out of the strike zone. Up and in. I think it’s a cutter, 96 [mph], and he’s able to hit it on a line like that. Amazing.”
After the game, Soto explained that he was looking for a pitch in that area, up and in, gleaning from information he gathered in the first three innings. He said teammates Jesse Winker and Brett Baty, also left-handed hitters, told him Brown felt comfortable throwing cutters up and in.
“So I was aware of that pitch, definitely,” said Soto, who finished 1-for-3 with a walk. “You’re hunting for something in the strike zone. He’s a guy who has a lot of ride [with his pitches]. But always aware of that pitch.”
Soto, who has been booed before each of his nine plate appearances in this series, had struck out in his previous two at-bats going back to the Mets’ season-opening loss Thursday when he went down swinging as the game-tying run for the final out against All-Star closer Josh Hader.
He exacted some revenge Friday with his first home run in orange and blue after clubbing a career-high 41 in his lone season with the New York Yankees in 2024.
“It’s Juan Soto,” Mendoza said. “He’s going to come through more times than not. What you want is to give him and the guys a chance to win a baseball game. We did that yesterday and didn’t get the W. Today, he came in and did what he did. He’s a special player.”