Elly De La Cruz Does It Right

Elly De La Cruz is one-third of the way to an all-time season in Cincinnati.

De La Cruz collected his first triple of the season on Tuesday, ripping a middle-middle changeup from Jesús Luzardo into the gap in left-center at 103 mph. He later drew a walk to raise his wRC+ on the year to 147. His 2.6 WAR ranks third in the majors behind only Bobby Witt Jr. (3.1) and Shohei Ohtani (2.9). If the season ended today, De La Cruz would be the favorite to at least challenge Ohtani for the National League MVP:

De La Cruz at the moment is on pace for 30 stolen bases, 38 home runs, and 8.9 WAR. The first two numbers aren’t all that notable, beyond our affinity for the nice round, rhythmic 30-30 label. Well, 38 homers would be a career high for De La Cruz, who topped out at 25 in 2024. But no, it’s the 8.9-WAR pace that’s caught my attention. That would tie him with George Foster in 1977 for the fifth-best Reds season ever — a leaderboard that goes back to 1882 — behind only Joe Morgan, who registered 11.0 WAR in 1975 and 9.5 WAR in both 1973 and 1976, and Johnny Bench, who put up 9.2 WAR in 1972. We simply haven’t seen a a performance this good in Cincinnati in 50 years.

Except, of course, we have… from De La Cruz himself:

We can see that, in stretches of about 30% of a season, De La Cruz has been this productive several times before. He entered the All-Star break at least this hot last year and finished with 4.3 WAR. In 2024, he started equally hot and got even hotter in August; his 6.6 WAR ranked third among NL position players that season. Indeed, De La Cruz has been one of the 10 best position players in the majors since his debut in June 2023. But the one thing he’s yet to do is put together a year of wall-to-wall excellence, and there’s an understandable reflex to pump the brakes on this being the breakout season that cements him as a generation-defining player.

If you’d like to cut the brake line, however, and careen recklessly toward hypothetical hardware, I do think there are some signs that this version of De La Cruz is different and better. The main thing is he’s made a massive leap against left-handed pitching:

Notice that I’m specifically calling out “vs. LHP as RHH” and vice versa. De La Cruz is a switch-hitter, and if you made it here, you know that switch-hitters bat from the side of the plate that’s opposite the arm the pitcher uses to throw. For that reason, it generally would be redundant for me to include both identifiers.

But I wanted to make sure to exclude this:

Yes, on April 21, De La Cruz stood in the righty batter’s box to face Rays righty-throwing third baseman Ben Williamson, and smoked a 48-mph “slider” 405 feet to left. I don’t know if handedness matters much for switch-hitters when facing a guy quite literally lobbing the ball, but that does go down as a right-on-right homer. It was only the 14th homer by a switch-hitter while not switch-hitting in the Pitch Tracking Era. And so I’ve intentionally removed it from the table above.

That table does, however, include this home run that De La Cruz hit off an actual pitcher, left-hander Steven Matz, earlier that day. De La Cruz got a middle-middle sinker and lasered it 111.6 mph out to the opposite field.

That homer actually illustrates the biggest change he’s made against lefties this year. De La Cruz used to be a dead pull hitter from the right side, tending to pound the ball into the ground and trying to leg out singles. This year, he’s letting the ball travel and going the other way, and most of that contact happens to be in the air. It’s typically better to pull the ball in the air, because that’s the easiest way to hit home runs. But the most important thing is to get the ball in the air in any direction, and he’s doing that this year.

It’s neat that not only is De La Cruz now elevating with his righty swing, but that he’s also elevating the exact right amount. He hasn’t popped up a single pitch while batting right-handed, with most of his contact (a sample of 39 total batted balls) hit at the ideal angles for home runs:

The plot also shows us that he’s squaring up the ball significantly more, especially at those elevated angles. De La Cruz’s hard-hit rate as a righty has jumped from 35.3% last year to 53.8% this year — ninth best in the majors so far.

The boost in performance also happens to line up with several fundamental changes. He’s closed up his stance a bit, getting wider while turning his front shoulder more toward the pitcher. He’s not quite back to where he was as a rookie, when he stood parallel to the plate, but he does look a bit more balanced. He’s also swinging much harder right-handed this year. He’s gained 1.5 mph from the right side since 2025, which would be one of the 10 largest changes year over year (if Baseball Savant tracked changes by handedness). In fact, he’s now swinging harder from the right side than he is from the left, which he’s never done over a full season in his career.

To be sure, some of these changes apply to his lefty swing as well, and there are broader approach adjustments beyond handedness — he’s chasing less, whiffing less, and swinging less overall. But De La Cruz was already a great hitter from the left side, and that simply remains the case. That’s what makes this so exciting. If he’s figured out how to go from quite bad to quite good on the short side, that would take him from “good hitter for a guy who plays a premium position” to truly one of the most productive hitters in the majors.

And that’s on top of a return to form in the field. De La Cruz’s defense was controversial when he first arrived. He made tons and tons of errors – nobody made more from 2023 to 2025 — but those errors often came on plays other shortstops wouldn’t have had a chance to make. His superior range and arm made him one of the five best defensive shortstops in the majors in 2024. But this delicate balance disappeared last year, with a bit less range and all the same blunders making him a net negative at short. This year, the range is back, again making him look like a top-five shortstop in baseball. And he’s made just four errors, on pace for exactly half his total from last year.

There are all sorts of great highlights from De La Cruz this year, but my favorite came just last Friday. The range to simply get to this ball, the coordination to adjust to a funky hop, the athleticism to push up off the ground, the footwork to get in a position to throw, and the arm strength to nab Angel Martínez — a fantastic play all around.

Now, the final element of De La Cruz’s all-around game is baserunning. He leads the league in stolen bases since his debut, and he’s also one of the five best baserunners on balls in play. This year, though, he’s been closer to neutral. It’s the one place he’s taken a step backward.

De La Cruz in 2026 has taken the extra base as well as ever. And at least in April, he had eight stolen bases on 11 attempts — not a great month by his standards but still enough for the top 10. But in May he has just one stolen base on two attempts. Baseball Savant suggests he’s attempting to steal on a career-low rate of opportunities.

It’s also worth pointing out that his sprint speed in 2026 is listed at 28.1 ft/s, down from 29.1 last year and 30.0 the year before. That’s to be expected, as speed is usually the first thing consumed by Father Time, but it’s clear De La Cruz is no longer the fastest player in baseball. I also wonder if part of the decline is intentional. Sprint speed is often considered a “hustle” metric because it captures the top two-thirds of a player’s competitive runs. This means “sprint speed” is not always about a player’s true capacity for speed, but the effort he tends to exert over a range of plays.

And that brings us back to De La Cruz’s propensity to fade late in the year. It was well reported early in his career that his second-half slumps were a matter of fatigue. That’s understandable, given the all-out nature of his game: Swinging hard, taking the extra base, sprawling for balls around the infield, and often winding up on the ground. The narrative was a bit different last year, with De La Cruz’s late struggles attributed to playing through a leg injury and coping with the death of his sister — again, understandable. It’s possible that this year he’s running less aggressively to conserve energy and stay healthy and productive later into the season. Or maybe he’s just lost a step.

So, if you’re keeping score, De La Cruz is still hitting right-handed pitchers, hitting lefties for the first time, fielding better than ever, and running a bit less. He’s the most complete he’s ever been, and it’s no wonder he’s near the top of just about every leaderboard. Can he keep it up? Well, we won’t know for a few more months. But a great season starts at the beginning, and once again, De La Cruz is on his way.