The Red-Hot Elly De La Cruz

The Reds dropped six out of seven games to the Dodgers this season, all within the last two weeks, but Elly De La Cruz no doubt left an impression both on them and the rest of baseball. The 24-year-old shortstop homered in five of those seven games while lighting up Statcast and assembling some eye-opening highlight clips. Although the Reds have regressed after making the playoffs last year, De La Cruz is putting the finishing touches on his best offensive campaign — and he still has a reasonable chance at his first 30-homer, 30-steal season.

Coming as they have while the Reds play out the string of a disappointing season, De La Cruz’s recent feats at the plate and in the field admittedly have a bit of a Tungsten Arm O’Doyle feel. After claiming the third NL Wild Card spot last year with an 83-79 record — the Reds’ first postseason berth in a full season since 2013 — they’ve slipped to 71-82, including 12-20 since August 15, the second-worst record in the NL during that span. But it’s hardly De La Cruz’s fault that Hunter Greene made just five starts before undergoing Tommy John surgery, that starters Nick Lodolo, Rhett Lowder, and Brady Singer are all sporting ERAs well over 5.00, or that TJ Friedl, Ke’Bryan Hayes, Noelvi Marte, and Matt McLain have combined for nearly 1,200 plate appearances and a 49 wRC+.

Against that dismal backdrop, De La Cruz has still kept the Reds worth watching, if only to see what the switch-hitting 6-foot-6 marvel might do next. From September 5–9, he homered in five straight games, the first two coming against the Brewers at Great American Ballpark and the last three at Dodger Stadium. The Brewers broke De La Cruz’s streak, holding him homerless during last weekend’s three-game series in Milwaukee, but he was back at it with homers against the Dodgers in Cincinnati on Monday and Wednesday. Unfortunately, twice during that stretch (September 9 and 14, both against the Dodgers), his homer provided the Reds with their only run of the game. Here are the dingers from the five-game streak:

That streak placed De La Cruz in the company of White Sox rookies Munetaka Murakami (April 17–22) and Tristan Peters (August 22–26), Tigers first baseman Spencer Torkelson (April 22–26), and Phillies slugger Kyle Schwarber (May 7-12), all of whom homered in five straight games this season as well, with the Rays’ Junior Caminero going yard in six straight games (June 25–July 1). De La Cruz’s streak tied one by Eugenio Suárez from 2018 (July 23–27) as the second longest by a Red in the last 10 seasons, with the longest a seven-gamer belonging to Joey Votto in 2021 (July 24–31), one short of the major league record shared by Dale Long, Don Mattingly, and Ken Griffey Jr.

Beyond the volume of De La Cruz’s homers was their emphatic nature. Six of them had exit velocities of 106 mph or higher, with his solo shot off Evan Phillips of the Dodgers on Monday leading the pack at 114.1 mph, followed by a 112.1-mph solo home run off the Brewers’ Dustin May on September 5. His two-run homer off Tarik Skubal on September 8 had an estimated distance of 444 feet, making it both this season’s longest at Dodger Stadium and also the longest surrendered by the two-time reigning Cy Young winner. The clout off Phillips was estimated at 457 feet, making it the longest hit at Great American this year — it actually left the ballpark after bouncing on the concourse — as well as De La Cruz’s longest since September 26, 2023 (a career-best 467-footer).

De La Cruz’s recent hot streak has been about more than just home runs. Before going 0-for-4 with three strikeouts against the Dodgers on Thursday afternoon, he had reached base in 23 consecutive games dating back to August 22, matching the longest streak of his career, from April 9 to May 4 of last season. Over the course of this year’s streak, he hit .424/.480/.793 with eight home runs, four stolen bases, a 242 wRC+ (tops in the majors over that span, two points higher than that of Rafael Devers), and 2.4 WAR (also tops, 0.3 WAR ahead of an MVP-bound Pete Crow-Armstrong). During that stretch, De La Cruz’s batted balls averaged a sizzling 99.6 mph in exit velocity, with a 29.7% barrel rate and a 67.2% hard-hit rate.

On the other side of the ball, De La Cruz also uncorked the hardest throw for an assist by an infielder in the Statcast era, a 102-mph relay that nabbed the Dodgers’ Teoscar Hernández at the plate as he tried for an inside-the-park home run on September 9. That was the same night De La Cruz homered off Yoshinobu Yamamoto.

Though the velocity on that throw was revised downward upon review, from an initial report of 105.3 mph, it was still 2.2 mph faster than the previous high — which was set by De La Cruz on July 20, 2023 (a relay throw to catch the Giants’ Wilmer Flores at the plate), and matched on August 8 of this season (yet another relay, this one to nail the Nationals’ Nasim Nuñez trying to score). In fact, according to MLB.com’s David Adler, De La Cruz owns the five fastest infielder assists in the Statcast era. The others are also on relays to the plate, with this 99.7-mph one from August 27, 2023 (cutting down the Diamondbacks’ Corbin Carroll trying to complete an inside-the-park homer) and this 99.2-mph one from August 19 this season (extinguishing a none-too-swift Blaze Jordan trying to score) rounding out the top five.

Overall, including Thursday’s 0-fer, De La Cruz is hitting .284/.362/.517 for a 138 wRC+. All of those numbers represent career highs, with his slugging percentage ranking sixth in the league and his wRC+ seventh. Thanks in large part to his on-base streak, his 6.0 WAR ranks second among NL position players behind PCA; he’s still 0.7 behind the combined pitching and offense total for Shohei Ohtani, but could close the gap during the two-way superstar’s stint on the injured list. De La Cruz also remains 0.8 WAR shy of his own career high, set in 2024, but he played 160 games that year, whereas he’s totaled 134 this year, having missed three weeks in June due to a right hamstring strain. He would max out at 143 games if he plays all nine remaining on the Reds’ schedule.

De La Cruz has reason to do just that. While his 28 homers already represents a career high, he’s just two away from reaching 30, and needs four stolen bases to get to 30 in that category as well. He’s not running as often — or as fast — as he used to. In 2024, De La Cruz led the NL with 67 steals (in 83 attempts) with 100th-percentile sprint speed, but this year he’s stolen just 26 in 34 attempts, including only four in August and two in September, with 80th-percentile sprint speed; it’s understandable if he’s not as willing to test his hamstring. If he does reach 30 in both categories, he would join PCA (44 homers, 37 steals) and likely CJ Abrams, who currently has 30 homers and 29 steals, in this year’s club.

The switch-hitting De La Cruz’s big step forward has been driven by significant improvement in his production against left-handed pitching. He’s made adjustments to his right-handed swing that have brought it more in line with his left-handed one, and gained substantial bat speed from both sides of the plate that have resulted in much better contact. Some of this was documented earlier this season, here by Ryan Blake, at MLB.com by Jared Greenspan, and elsewhere, though not everything that was true when they checked in still holds.

Though he’s a natural right-hander based upon both his throws and his self-description, De La Cruz’s production against lefties lagged before this season, as both Blake and Greenspan pointed out. Updating the numbers:

From 2023–25, De La Cruz hit .271/.351/.497 for a 128 wRC+ against righties, placing him the 83rd percentile among lefties with at least 300 plate appearances in that context. Meanwhile, he hit just .220/.278/.329 for a 66 wRC+ against lefties, landing him in the third percentile among righties with at least 300 plate appearances in that context. With more than twice as many plate appearances against righties, he was still above average overall, with a 109 wRC+ during that span, but the split was jarring; that’s the kind of production that gets lefties benched against same-side pitching.

This year is a different story, as De La Cruz has has improved his wRC+ by 112 points against lefties. If that sounds like a lot, it is. Our Splits Leaderboard data only goes back to 2002, but of the 2,615 player-seasons in which a right-handed batter took at least 100 plate appearances against lefties in back-to-back seasons, it’s the 16th-largest gain, placing him well inside the 99th percentile. The largest gain was made by switch-hitting Orioles catcher Matt Wieters, who jumped from a 44 wRC+ in 127 plate appearances against lefties in 2010 to a 201 wRC+ in 142 plate appearances against them in ’11. The median wRC+ within the top 20 was 58 in year one and 172 in year two; qualitatively, that looks like a turn from total incompetence to total mastery, but a lot of fluky things can happen from year to year over the course of 100 or 150 plate appearances, and figuring out the whys of all those big gains, and the extent to which they were maintained, is outside the scope of this piece. For De La Cruz, at least, the improvement is founded in much better contact:

De La Cruz’s average exit velocity against lefties has jumped 7.4 mph from 2025, with his barrel rate nearly tripling, his hard-hit rate increasing by almost 20 percentage points, and his expected slugging percentage surging by almost 130 points. What’s more, his actual production from that side has exceeded his expected numbers by a fair bit. He’s not only producing his highest pulled-air rate of his career from that side (though a comparatively low one in the grand scheme), he’s also poked five homers to right (opposite field) from among 24 batted balls, for a 1.435 slugging and an .806 xSLG; in three previous seasons, he had just one such home run.

Meanwhile, De Le Cruz’s average exit velo against righties has improved by 2.3 mph, with his barrel and hard-hit rates and xSLG jumping as well, but not by as much as from the other side. He’s underperforming those numbers, in part because of that very low pulled-air rate, but it’s still very good production from that side.

Underlying those higher exit velocities are better swing decisions and improved bat speed from both sides. On the former front, he’s cut his chase rate from 28.5% to a career-low 25.8%, with his swing rate falling from a career-high 45.6% to a career-low 40.9%. As for the latter front:

I ditched the small-sample 2023 data, when he was swinging even faster, but here you can see that relative to the last season, De La Cruz’s bat speed against lefties has improved by 2.3 mph, with his fast-swing rate against them increasing by 21 points and his squared-up and blast rates really jumping. Earlier in the season, he had shortened his right-handed swing relative to last year, but that no longer holds. From both sides of the plate, the position of his feet has varied so widely from month to month over that three-season stretch that I didn’t even try to get more granular, but he has closed up his stance on both sides relative to last season, and increased the distance between his feet. During this current tear, in September he’s averaged a 13-degree open stance with his feet 34.9 inches apart from the right side of the plate (versus lefties) and a 19-degree open stance with his feet 35.7 inches apart from the left side (versus righties).

The increased distance between his feet, or the season-to-season variation, owes to De La Cruz’s moving from a leg kick (2024) to a toe tap (2025), and back to an even bigger leg kick this year, with refined mechanics helping him to be more explosive and produce greater power. On MLB Network on Thursday, Yonder Alonso and Mark DeRosa broke down the slugger’s progression and the changes with video examples better than I can muster. This is four minutes from a segment that’s over nine minutes long.

The two former major leaguers disagree on some points, but as Alonso explains it, with the toe tap, De La Cruz’s swing was “two-step” and he was “a hair late” to the ball. The leg kick creates “a much better angle to the baseball and better bat speed,” and as shown near the end of this excerpt, his swings from both sides of the plate are much more similar than they were before.

As you can see from the table presented near the end of that excerpt, De La Cruz’s overall year-to-year increases in barrel rate and hard-hit rate are the largest in the majors, with his increased exit velocity the second largest. Including updated stats from Thursday, here are the top 10s for each of those:

In that context, De La Cruz’s improvements in those two rate stats particularly stand out. The distance between him and the second-ranked hitter is about the same as those between the second- and 10th-ranked hitters. The same is more or less true in terms of exit velocity, in that the distance between him and the third-ranked hitter is even greater than that between no. 3 and no. 10.

With his huge frame and exceptional speed, power, and arm, De La Cruz has always been one of the majors’ most compelling players to watch. As he’s refined his game, that’s become even more true — and to think, he’s just 24 years old. I can’t wait to see where these improvements take him.