Cody Bellinger May Have Just Saved The Dodgers Season

Some guys lose it in October, and some guys find it. Cody Bellinger has found it. 

It can't be overstated just how bad of a regular-season Cody Bellinger had. Only two years removed from his MVP winning season in 2019, Belli played 95 games this year and put up an abysmal -1.5 bWAR and an even worse .542 OPS. He did miss substantial time due to injury, but it seriously seemed like he had fallen off the face of the earth. In two years, I have never seen a player go from a top-five player in the sport to a bottom-five player. But when you have a player of his talents, it always feels like they're one or two swings away from a breakout. Those two swings this year just happened to come in October. After his game-winning series-clinching RBI single against the Ginat in Game 5 of the NLDS, Bellinger delivered one of the biggest hits of his career with a three-run shot in the bottom of the eighth. Mookie Betts would go on to win the game with an RBI double a few batters later. 

This series seemed like it was so close to over, and Bellinger saved the defending champions with one swing. Gun to my head, I still say that the Braves probably win this NLCS because Dodgers pitching appears to have worn down. But man, if LA comes back to win this thing, we'll look back at Bellinger's swing as one of those all-time great series-changing moments.