Yankees trade for Cubs OF Cody Bellinger as former MVP’s career takes another turn

The New York Yankees have their Juan Soto replacement — or at least a guy who can take Juan Soto’s place on the field.

The team swung a trade with the Chicago Cubs for 2019 NL MVP Cody Bellinger, it announced Tuesday, betting on a talented player to bounce back from a rough couple of years. The Cubs are also sending $5 million to the Yankees and will receive right-handed reliever Cody Poteet in return.

The cash will reportedly cover $2.5 million of Bellinger’s $27.5 million salary in 2025 and $2.5 million of either his 2026 salary or the buyout if he doesn’t exercise his player option. Per USA Today’s Bob Nightengale, Bellinger has been informed that he will play center field for the Yankees, with Aaron Judge moving to right after covering center for all of 2024.

Bellinger’s father, Clay, was part of the Yankees organization from 1999 to 2001. He’ll also be working with his wife’s ex, as Chase Carter, the mother of his two children, dated Yankees slugger Giancarlo Stanton in 2018 and 2019.

Soto’s record-setting contract with the New York Mets left the Yankees in dire need of a corner outfielder with enough pop to slide into the middle of the order. Bellinger could fit that bill and was available via trade due to his contract with the Cubs, which gives him player options for 2025 and 2026 that pay him a total of $52.5 million.

The move ends a two-year tenure for Bellinger with the Cubs, and it’s not a big surprise, given that the team was rumored to be shopping him even before it acquired Houston Astros star Kyle Tucker, who fills a similar role, in a blockbuster trade. Two years after starting with a clean slate in Chicago, Bellinger will once again try to reestablish his stardom with a new team.

Cody Bellinger’s career has been chaotic

Bellinger is one of many people for whom 2019 feels like a very long time ago.

By his third season in the majors, Bellinger was a 23-year-old MVP with the Los Angeles Dodgers and on track to sign the kind of mega-deal that young, offensively dominant outfielders are prone to landing. Per Baseball Reference’s calculations, he was worth 8.6 wins above replacement in his MVP season in 2019, a larger number than the career highs of Soto and Tucker.

Then he performed perhaps the costliest high-five in the history of baseball.

After hitting a game-winning home run in Game 7 of the 2020 NLCS, Bellinger dislocated his right shoulder while celebrating with Kiké Hernández and was never the same after that. He dealt with shoulder injuries earlier in his career, but this one required surgery and presaged the worst year of his professional career.

Bellinger was legitimately unplayable in 2021 and only a little better in 2022, with his swing continuing to look off. Rather than pay him an arbitration salary likely in excess of $17 million, the Dodgers non-tendered him and let him hit free agency a year earlier than expected.

The Cubs opted to buy low on Bellinger with a pillow contract and were rewarded with a 2023 season that won him NL Comeback Player of the Year. His shoulder finally appeared to be healthy, or he at least found a way to work around the issue, as he hit .307/.356/.525 for his new team.

Bellinger then opted to test free agency with his value partially reestablished, but suitors were slow to meet his asking price. He was one of four notable clients of mega-agent Scott Boras to have his free agency stretch into spring training, and the result was a lower-than-expected, three-year, $80 million deal to return to the Cubs.

The deal has opt-outs after both the first and second years, so Bellinger was effectively setting himself up for another free agency as soon as he had another good season. That didn’t happen in 2024, with his numbers regressing across the board, Bellinger opting in to the second year of his deal, and his contract becoming a small albatross for the North Siders.

And so they decided to get off Cody Bellinger’s wild ride by trading him. At 29 years old, Bellinger should theoretically still have a few more years to rediscover his swing, but it’s worth wondering how old his shoulder really feels at this point.

What to make of this trade for the Yankees and Cubs?

New York expressed interest in Bellinger early last offseason, when he was a much hotter commodity on the free-agent market, but the Yankees instead addressed their outfield needs by acquiring Juan Soto and Alex Verdugo via trade in December. That took one obvious suitor out of the mix for Bellinger and ultimately paved the way for him to return to the Cubs on a three-year, $80 million deal that didn’t come together until the end of February.

Fast-forward a year, and Bellinger once again emerged as a logical target for New York, this time via trade — especially once Soto made his monumental decision to depart the Yankees’ outfield in favor of a historic contract with the Mets. Until Tuesday, the Yankees had responded to Soto’s departure by adding impact on the mound, rather than attempting to replace Soto’s contributions in the lineup. That first came in the form of left-hander Max Fried, who signed an eight-year, $218M contract — the largest ever for a southpaw — to join the Yankees’ rotation. Brian Cashman and Co. followed with the acquisition of closer Devin Williams from Milwaukee to bolster the bullpen in a big way.

At some point, though, New York was going to need to start rebuilding its offense. It wasn’t just Soto’s massive presence the Yankees needed to replace, either: Left fielder Alex Verdugo, second baseman Gleyber Torres and first baseman Anthony Rizzo were all 2024 regulars who hit free agency, with none of them seemingly slated to return. There was no shortage of spots on the New York roster to address, but Bellinger’s addition is a solid first step.

On the flip side, there’s no hiding what the Cubs were trying to do here. Poteet was solid in Triple-A and across a few big-league cameos for New York in 2024, and he should help backfill some of the pitching depth lost by Chicago’s trading Hayden Wesneski to Houston in the Tucker deal. But this trade was about off-loading Bellinger’s salary, and that should be met with only one question for a big-market franchise that hasn’t won a playoff game since 2017: OK, now what?

Teams in Chicago’s position should be making trades such as this only if it enables them to make additional moves to improve their roster. Tucker was a titanic acquisition, certainly. He is clearly an upgrade over Bellinger, who no longer fit on the roster. But after several seasons of mediocrity, the Cubs must continue pushing forward. If clearing the $20 million-plus owed to Bellinger this season opens the door for additional spending in free agency or the acquisition of high-paid impact players via trade, that’s great news on the North Side. Until those moves occur, though, it’ll be difficult to grade this trade as anything other than what it is: a salary dump.