The team has yet to officially confirm the signing, but the structure of the contract is one that benefits both Bellinger and the Cubs.
In the wee hours of the night on Saturday, ESPN’s Jeff Passan reported that the Cubs had re-signed outfielder/first baseman Cody Bellinger to a three-year, $80 million deal.
The team has yet to officially confirm the signing, but the structure of the contract is one that benefits both Bellinger and the Cubs. As reported by Passan, Bellinger will earn $30 million in his first two years and then $20 million in the third. But what makes this contract a win for both sides is the inclusion of opt-outs after the 2024 and 2025 seasons.
Bellinger had a bounceback season with the Cubs in ‘23, posting a .881 OPS with 26 home runs and 29 doubles. He had not put up an OPS over .800 since 2019, the last three years of his tenure with the Dodgers marred by injuries and poor performance. So much so that they released him after the 2022 season. The Cubs signed him to a one-year, $17.5 million deal for last year, and he rewarded them by putting up numbers similar to what he had done the first three years of his career, when he won both the Rookie of the Year and National League MVP awards.
Coming off of a performance like what he had last season, Bellinger opted for free agency this winter. He and his agent Scott Boras were in the market for a long-term, high dollar deal — projections were around the eight-year, $200 million mark in November — but that kind of contract didn’t materialize. Teams may have hesitated to lock Bellinger down for that long without assurance that he could continue performing to his 2023 numbers.
