The Dodgers’ Cody Bellinger Takes Home April’s Triple Crown
Are you tired of us posting Cody Bellinger articles yet? What can we say, the young Dodgers’ outfielder has proven to be unstoppable for the first month of the season and he finished up strong. In fact, Bellinger took home the April Triple Crown with one of the best Dodgers’ months of all time.
Cody Bellinger takes the April Triple Crown ? pic.twitter.com/8BCUknnIia
— FOX Sports: MLB (@MLBONFOX) May 1, 2019
Obviously, the first month of the season does not mean that a player is going to go on a dominate the rest of the year. But it’s still exciting to have a guy on your team tear apart opposing pitching the way Cody Bellinger has. He slashed .431/.508/.890 in his first full month of the season and hasn’t really shown any signs of slowing down. He is 14-28 with four home runs in his last nine games, and he seems to be hitting the ball hard every at-bat.
So how is he doing this? Well for starters, Bellinger has managed to cut his strikeout rate nearly in half from last season. Any time a player can make more contact, their stats are bound to trend upward. His average exit velocity of 93.6 moh is in the top six percent of the league, while his 54.3 percent hard-hit rate is even better. So he is seeing the ball well, and barreling up baseballs often. An excellent combination for a Major League hitter.
The last offensive Triple Crown winner for the season was Miguel Cabrera in 2012 with the Tigers. The Dodgers have never had an offensive player win the award, but Clayton Kershaw won the pitching version of it in 2011. Sand Koufax won it three times between 1963 and 1966.
What’s in store for the month of May for the former Rookie of the Year?
DODGERS: CODY BELLINGER BREAKS YET ANOTHER MLB RECORD
What i want from Bellinger is for him to stay relatively healthy, continue his decreased strike-out rate and as a result minimize that hole in his swing that was exposed by the Astros in the 2017 World Series and why he regressed in the 2018 season. If the Dodgers are fortunate to get to the post-season, improve on that too!
What I did like about last night’s game was that even against a LHP Roberts ‘listened’ to me and kept Bellinger in the cleanup spot, where he should remain against all comers for the time being.
Accolades are nice, especially when they deal with one of our Blue Crew!!!! But, lets not get caught up in the hype, There will be peaks and valleys and the season is young. Frankly, I was most pleased that Big Red got his first dinger of the 2019 season, and that CT hit with authority. Go Blue!!!
He’s 23 years old for crap sake. Perhaps he’s matured a bit as a hitter.