Dodgers Team News

Dodgers: Dave Roberts Reveals Why Cody Bellinger Changed His Swing

You would think that a guy who won the National League MVP award in 2019 would do everything he could to not change a single thing. But that has not been the case for the Dodgers’ Cody Bellinger in 2020. The superstar outfielder has made a few minor mechanical tweaks, and fans are starting to notice. 

Bellinger has looked a little bit lost at the plate during the Dodgers’ intrasquad games. He seems to be pulling off of the ball and is often behind on most fastballs, signaling that his swing is much longer. Even looking at a side-by-side comparison of last year shows you that his stance is more open and that his hands are rocking a lot more. 



Dave Roberts spoke about Bellinger with Dodgers’ media on Monday and addressed the change to his swing. According to Roberts, Bellinger was not happy with the way he finished up last year. 

I think that in talking to Cody, he won the MVP, but for him in his words, he didn’t have a good second-half. As he finished the season didn’t feel comfortable and felt that he was open to a change…I think that it’s an individual, it’s a feel thing, for me as long as he has confidence…I’m optimistic. 

Full Dave Roberts Zoom Call

There is certainly some truth to that as Bellinger did not put up great numbers in the second half of the season. He slashed .263/.371/.546 with 17 home runs in 68 games following the All-Satr break. But as far as the Dodgers are concerned, they trust Bellinger to feel things out and react accordingly. 

There is certainly a swing change, that if you put eyes on it, you see it’s different than it was last year. So I think that for Cody, for us, it’s just more of getting him at-bats…syncing up the new mechanics a little bit takes time…I’m confident that he’s gonna work through it and he’ll be fine. 

Bellinger finished with a ridiculous stat line last year that ultimately resulted in him taking home Most Valuable Player honors. The fact that he is tinkering with his swing this close to Opening Day is a little bit concerning, but I would give it another week before sounding the alarms. 

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5 Comments

  1. At least they’ve noticed it for once. Last year these so called coaches just let it go on for months. We could’ve used his bat in October

    1. That’s a good point. What went on there? I wonder if maybe they did try but Bellinger had his own goals in mind

  2. It was more than half of a season that he changed from being a line drive all fields hitter to going for the long ball. Sounds to me like he is again putting the long ball ahead of OBP as a longer swing means less contact and more SOs. About 90 days of solid hitting then a below-average hitter the rest of the season should not earn you the MVP award.

    1. We still to this day have many selfish hitters on our team. I know they’ve worked hard to create an image that this is a tight knit group with great chemistry and that may very well be true as far as in the clubhouse but when it comes down to it we still got guys like this who only care about their career stats and becoming a specific type of player. That doesn’t win championships when you have too many of those.

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