Los Angeles Dodgers: Could Cody Bellinger bat .400?

27-game average

Looking strictly at batting average to this point in the season, Los Angeles Dodgers slugger Cody Bellinger’s candidacy is legit. But as the records of the immortals make clear, just as a hot start is no assurance of a .400 finish, neither is a relatively cool start necessarily a barrier.

There is no greater proof of that than Williams. On May 19, 1941, 27 games into what would become a .406 season, he was batting .342. Williams would not reach .400 for another week, and would not reach that level to stay until mid-July.

Brett started even more inconspicuously in 1980, batting just .269 through Kansas City’s 27th game. When Ichiro Suzuki finished the 2004 season with a.372 average, he was hitting just .285 through his team’s 27th game, played on May 5 that year. On his way to batting .388 in 1977, Carew was batting .340 through the Twins’ 27th game on May 7.

Gwynn is the only one who actually set an early .400 pace. Through San Diego’s 27th game of 1994, played on May 3, he was batting .402. He actually remained above .400 for 10 more days, and never fell far below that level.

So a .400 start isn’t an absolute requirement. But it is also not an assurance. Plenty of players have batted .400 or better for the season’s first month and then faltered. As recently as 2017, Washington Nationals’ first baseman Ryan Zimmerman carried a .435 batting average to May 7. Then Zimmerman went hitless in five of his next eight games and eventually finished at .303.