De La Cruz is reaching his potential. Will he realize it in Cincinnati?
By C. TRENT ROSECRANS / THE ATHLETIC
Ken Griffey Jr. played nine seasons in Cincinnati and never saw the playoffs. Joey Votto spent his entire 17-year career in the big leagues with the Reds, played in 11 postseason games and never won a series in October.
Elly De La Cruz is beginning to live up to his promise as one of the best players in MLB, but the team around him is not following suit. Will the two-time All-Star shortstop be the latest generational talent to be wasted in Cincinnati?
As De La Cruz’s 23-game on-base streak was snapped last Thursday, he watched the Los Angeles Dodgers clinch the National League West for the fifth straight season and the 13th time in 14 years with an 8-2 win at Great American Ball Park.
It was not the first time that he witnessed the reigning world champions celebrate in person. In October, De La Cruz reached the playoffs for the first time, but the Reds made an early exit after two wild-card games at Dodger Stadium. On the heels of a disappointing follow-up by the franchise, it does not seem improbable that those could be his only postseason appearances in a Cincinnati uniform.
De La Cruz, 24, is one of the best players on the planet, but as Mike Trout has proved for years with the Los Angeles Angels, one player doesn’t make a team.
Is De La Cruz destined to have to find success somewhere other than Cincinnati? Entering this offseason, De La Cruz will be eligible for arbitration for the first time, which could also start a countdown to the end of his Reds tenure.
Under the current rules, De La Cruz will be eligible for free agency after the 2029 season. If that remains the case under a new collective bargaining agreement, the Reds would have to trade him before then to get the maximum return in prospect capital, like the Washington Nationals did with Juan Soto at the trade deadline in 2022, more than two years before he hit free agency.
Much like Soto, who turned down a 15-year, $440 million deal from the Nats in the summer of 2022, De La Cruz also turned down the largest contract in Reds team history in January, a deal that would have eclipsed Votto’s 10-year, $225 million extension in 2012.
A big difference is that the Nationals had already won a World Series with a 21-year-old Soto in 2019. The Reds don’t appear to be anywhere near that.
Even Votto, who signed two long-term contracts with the team, said during last month’s NBC broadcast of a Reds-Chicago Cubs game that he did not see De La Cruz following in his footsteps by staying in Cincinnati.
“Unfortunately, we can’t afford him,” Votto said. “He’s going to cost roughly the GDP of a small country.”
Signed by the Reds as a 16-year-old in 2018, De La Cruz was not considered a prospect until the 2021 season. But by the time he made his debut in June 2023, he was near the top of most lists.
De La Cruz announced his arrival as a superstar-in-waiting almost immediately, hitting his first career home run nearly out of Great American Ball Park in his second major league game.
Last week, against the Dodgers, he finally did just that, with his ninth-inning home run on Sept. 14 bouncing on the concourse and over the fence into the street beyond the stadium.
If anything, De La Cruz has appeared to relish playing against Los Angeles. Throughout his career, he has 29 hits in 100 at-bats in 26 games against the Dodgers, including seven home runs, six doubles and two triples. He also has nine stolen bases. In seven games this season, he is 9 for 25 (.360) with a .407 on-base percentage and a 1.040 slugging percentage with five homers, two doubles and two steals.
“I know him enough, through All-Star Games and things like that, that he likes the big stage, he wants to play against the best, and against us, he certainly performs,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “But yeah, I think there’s a lot of willing takers for that person and talent.”
The Cubs’ Pete Crow-Armstrong will rightfully win this year’s National League MVP Award, but De La Cruz’s 6.2 mark in FanGraphs’ wins above replacement metric was third in the league, through Sunday’s games, behind that of Crow-Armstrong (10.4) and Milwaukee Brewers starter Jacob Misiorowski (6.5). He was 10th in Baseball Reference’s WAR at 5.6.
A year ago, Crow-Armstrong showed signs that he was on the verge of superstardom. The Cubs not only locked him up to a six-year, $115 million extension but also added veteran Alex Bregman to help fortify the roster and take some of the load off their emerging superstar. The Cubs won a series against the Reds at Great American Ball Park over the weekend and are on the cusp of clinching a playoff spot.
The Reds aren’t just De La Cruz, even if it appears that way at times. The team also has first baseman Sal Stewart, who is poised to win the National League Rookie of the Year Award, and starter Chase Burns, who made his first All-Star team, signed a long-term deal in July and has had as good a full season as a Reds starter since Johnny Cueto won 20 games in 2014.
The team’s ownership, though, has cried poor. The team’s free-agent signings have mostly fallen flat, and the farm system was recently rated as one of the worst in the game by Baseball America.
Meanwhile, De La Cruz has just improved. He came into this season with a stated goal of hitting better against left-handed pitching. Before this season, opposing managers would turn the switch hitter around and have him face southpaws. This year, his 1.031 on-base plus slugging percentage against lefties is the best in the National League.
The Reds traded for outfielder Dane Myers this past offseason. Myers, 30, enjoyed watching De La Cruz from afar, but up close it’s been different.
“I don’t want to give him a ceiling and then it be the floor,” Myers said. “Whatever he wants to do in this game, if he keeps his head on straight and keeps working, there’s nothing he can’t achieve. God willing, I think he’ll have a Hall of Fame career.”
But it’s fair to wonder, if Cooperstown does call, what logo he will have on his hat.
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