LOS ANGELES -- Less than an hour after the eighth-inning home run that tied Game 3 of the National League Championship Series and might have saved an entire season, Los Angeles Dodgers hitting coach Brant Brown recalled the point when Cody Bellinger hit rock bottom.
It was Sept. 10. The Dodgers had just returned from a trip to St. Louis, and Bellinger had begun the month by reaching base in only one of his first 24 plate appearances. His batting average dropped to .158, dead last among the 228 players who had accumulated at least 300 plate appearances by that point. So Brown and the Dodgers' coaches suggested a drastic mechanical adjustment that was rooted in desperation, the type a former MVP in his prime would never agree to so late in a season.
Bellinger accepted.
"I think he knew he had to," Brown said. "I think he knew he had to do something."
Bellinger's production had dipped to unfathomable levels in 2021. He made three separate trips to the injured list, struggled to regain his typical power after offseason surgery to his right shoulder and never seemed to look comfortable with a bat in his hand. As the regular season neared its conclusion, Bellinger, 26, seemed unplayable. His confidence, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said, "wavered a ton."
The adjustments the Dodgers suggested were an attempt at salvaging something.
Brown and Bellinger had worked closely together in the offseason heading into 2019, paving the way for an MVP performance. When Bellinger became adamant about swing adjustments heading into 2020, Brown did his best to establish a middle ground. Near the end of the 2021 season, as Bellinger spiraled more precipitously than ever, Brown and the rest of the hitting coaches recommended an overhaul.
The stance would be closed, the legs more bent, the hands significantly lower, the swing noticeably shorter.
The drastic change helped produce the biggest moment of Bellinger's career.
"You see the path of that bat tonight," Roberts said, "there's no way with an uppercut you're going to square that baseball up."
In Tuesday's eighth inning, with two on, one out and the count 1-0, the Dodgers down by three and Dodger Stadium beginning to show signs of life again, Bellinger reared back and swung so hard at a Luke Jackson slider that his left knee collapsed to the dirt. He got a little big -- but not that big -- while swinging through a down-the-middle, 97 mph fastball on the following pitch. But then Bellinger implemented a two-strike approach, the first hint of which was a noticeably wider base.
"In years past," Roberts said, "with not having gone through the struggles, he might not have made that adjustment."
Jackson's two-strike fastball darted well above the strike zone, sailing through the shadows that had long engulfed half the ballpark, but somehow Bellinger was ready for it.
"Honestly, for as weird as it was, I saw it," Bellinger said. "I saw it, and I just tried to put a good swing on it."
Before that pitch, Bellinger was a .097 hitter with 37 strikeouts in the 72 at-bats that ended with pitches in the upper third of the zone this season. He made contact 4.12 feet above home plate, making it the fifth-highest pitch to sail for a home run all season. It was his first home run all year on a pitch outside the strike zone and his second on a pitch that traveled at least 95 mph.
Bellinger raised both arms out wide as he approached first base, looking back at his teammates in what looked like a combination of genuine shock and raw elation. "Pure joy" was how Bellinger described it.
The Dodgers, who ultimately beat the Atlanta Braves 6-5 to cut Atlanta's series lead to 2-1, had been 0-81 when trailing by three or more runs in the eighth inning or later throughout their postseason history. They had been lifeless for six consecutive innings, inept at producing with runners in scoring position all series, clearly trending toward a 3-0 deficit only one team had ever overcome. Bellinger lifted them from all of that.
At lower points, when it became clear that his age-25 season would become one of the most disappointing in recent memory, Roberts repeatedly told Bellinger this was merely his path to greatness and that he would ultimately be hardened by it. It was his attempt at encouragement.
"It's showing his character and testing his character," Roberts said again on Tuesday. "He's going to be a better baseball player because of it."
It's starting to show up in October -- Bellinger has played a significant role offensively in all five of the Dodgers' postseason wins. In the NL Wild Card Game, he drew the ninth-inning walk -- off a lefty, the type he hit .116 against during the regular season -- that set up Chris Taylor's walk-off homer. In Game 2 of the NL Division Series, he hit the sixth-inning two-run double that opened the floodgates. In Game 4, he contributed two hits. In the deciding Game 5, he provided the go-ahead single in the ninth. His home run in NLCS Game 3, which came three batters before Mookie Betts delivered the winning double, gave Bellinger an .851 OPS this postseason, 309 points better than his regular-season mark.
"To see the old Cody back again, it's fun," Dodgers closer Kenley Jansen said Tuesday. "It's a great thing for the Dodgers."
The mechanical shift is temporary, Brown admits. It was meant to eliminate excess movement, give Bellinger a cleaner path from his bat head to the baseball and let his loose limbs and natural skill take over. The compact stance "changes his intent from the get-go," Brown said, allowing for the simple approach that would ideally lead to more contact. It has required a painstaking amount of work and patience and perseverance, but Bellinger and the Dodgers are finally reaping the benefits of it.
"Everyone has been down on him," Brown said, "but they don't know the work that he's gone through."