This MVP fave has put WS struggles in rearview

The great drama of the baseball season, at least for me, is watching the Dodgers trying to make it back to their third World Series in a row after losing the last two.

If the Dodgers manage to do that -- and manage not to be three-fourths of the way toward being the baseball version of the Buffalo Bills -- they will have accomplished something that only one other team in baseball history has ever done: Come back and win a Series after losing the previous two.

The only other team to ever do that was the 1923 Yankees. So it has been nearly a hundred years. That is the context here, and the history. And the challenge for Dave Roberts’ team.

But this is no tale of redemption for the Dodgers. Are you kidding? There is no disgrace in just making it to the World Series in the modern world, one in which you have to win three series and 11 games -- 12 if you’re a Wild Card. Two years ago, the Dodgers made it to Game 7 before losing to the Astros. Last year, they lost in five to the Red Sox.

Now, they are the best team in the National League again, and maybe the best in baseball. And they are trying to show the toughness and heart and even athletic character the Bills once showed by getting knocked down in the Super Bowl, and getting up, and going back, year after year.

And within the team drama is the personal drama of Cody Bellinger, who is one of the best players in baseball again; who tries to come back from a season -- and a World Series especially -- that were not up to what are clearly his standards. It is a little more than a quarter of a season, but Bellinger has gotten back up, too, in a very big way. With even bigger numbers.

Oh, sure. Right now in the NL there are Bellinger and Christian Yelich, the reigning MVP of the league, and everybody else.

Yelich has 21 homers, 43 RBIs, a .325 batting average, 55 hits in 47 games, an OPS of 1.176 and a slugging percentage of .740. Bellinger? He went 1-for-5 against the Pirates on Sunday and saw his batting average fall to -- wait for it -- a smoking hot .386. He has 18 home runs, 48 RBIs, 71 hits in 51 games, an OPS of 1.226 and a slugging percentage of .755. It is only one of the great beginnings in Dodger history, as Bellinger tries to write a different ending this season for himself and for his team.

Because the Dodgers and their fans -- and Bellinger himself -- have to wonder how last season might have gone differently, and ended differently, if he had been better than he was.

Coming off a rookie year when he hit 39 home runs in just 132 games and knocked in 97, Bellinger played in all 162 last season, but he ended up with 25 homers and 76 RBIs. Then came a World Series that was a disaster. He came to the plate 16 times. Got one hit. Did not hit a home run. Did not have an RBI. The batting average was .063. His team lost in five, lost a World Series at home again the way it had the year before. This was a sophomore slump, in lights.

Now you can make a case that even in Yelich’s league and in a Mike Trout world, Bellinger has been the best player in the game, right through one of the first markers of the season, which means Memorial Day. He has been a wonder and a force and looked like everything we thought he would be when he was a rookie, and so much more.

On Sunday, before the Dodgers beat up on the Pirates, 11-7, I asked Dave Roberts if he could find a way to sum up what Bellinger has meant so far to the 2019 Dodgers.

Roberts: “Cody has really grown this season as a player, but more importantly as a person. He’s becoming one of the leaders on this club -- not just because of his talent, but the way he plays the game and carries himself. There’s nothing on a baseball field he can’t do. He’s hands-down the best right fielder in the game. In the batter's box, he uses the whole field, can slug and takes his walks. His instincts and speed on the bases are always a weapon.”

Then Roberts added this line, just for fun: “Being able to write his name in the lineup every night makes me a pretty good manager.”

Roberts is a lot more than that, of course. You see that by the way his team has responded this season to the disappointments of the past two.

It wasn’t just Bellinger’s sophomore slump that hurt L.A. a year ago. The Dodgers basically didn’t have Corey Seager for the entire season. Even after they made the trade for Manny Machado, he was a very good player in Los Angeles, but hardly great, with 13 homers, 42 RBIs and a .273 average over 66 games. He was not a star. Nor was Bellinger.

Now Bellinger gets up and carries his team in a way that only great players can. Yelich’s numbers are something. Bellinger’s are something more. Everybody has a story when they get to October in baseball. Nobody will have a better one this October than Cody Bellinger.