Dodgers Rumors: Giants May Pursue Cody Bellinger if Aaron Judge Signs Elsewhere

MLB.com writer Will Leitch thinks the Giants could pursue former Dodger Cody Bellinger if they don't land Aaron Judge — and possibly even if they do.

Back in 2017, Aaron Judge and Cody Bellinger each won the Rookie of the Year Award. Later, each added an MVP Award to his trophy case. Now, they're both free agents and being linked to some of the same teams. Hard to tell the two apart, right?

Of course, Judge is coming off a 62-homer season in which he nearly won the Triple Crown and he easily won the AL MVP. Bellinger is coming off a second straiht awful season and wouldn't even be a free agent yet except the Dodgers non-tendered him rather than paying him $18 million or so next year.

Still, Bellinger is several years younger than Judge and still has potential to be outstanding. Plus, he's only looking for a one-year deal for much less money than Judge is seeking. So the two sluggers are on the radar of a lot of the same teams.

One of those teams is the Giants, as Will Leitch writes at MLB.com. In writing about Bellinger's most likely landing spots, Leitch lists the Giants second.

Clearly, Aaron Judge is the first priority. But if he ends up staying with the Yankees (or signing elsewhere), Bellinger isn’t a bad second option. He’s a better center fielder than anything they have now, he’d surely send plenty of baseballs into McCovey Cove and putting him in a Giants uniform is a great way to annoy Dodgers fans. All told: Even if they get Judge, they should go after Bellinger too. They need offense: If he’s close to what he was, he’s an instant upgrade.

As Leitch points out, there's probably room for both Judge and Bellinger in the Giants outfield if they choose to go that route. San Francisco's outfield was pretty bad in 2022, when they dropped 26 games in the standings from their division-winning 2021 season. Bellinger's defense would be welcome in the cavernous center field of Oracle Park, that's for sure.

But Oracle isn't friendly to power hitters, so it's debatable whether Belli would be interested in signing there when his goal is to re-establish his value as a hitter. If he gets right, he can hit anywhere, but that level of difficulty might not be his ideal fit.

Still, it's interesting (in a really, really bad way) to picture Bellinger in orange and black.