Elly De La Cruz, Baseball Unicorn
Elly De La Cruz of the Cincinnati Reds (Marca.com)
Cincinnati Reds’ star Elly De La Cruz is listed as 6’5”, 200 pounds by Baseball Reference and is probably the most exciting player in the National League this season. He’s only 22 years old, and carries an .816 OPS with an elite +9 OAA on defense. I haven’t even mentioned the most dazzling thing about him– his ridiculous 30.1 ft/sec speed and high level instincts that have led to 46 stolen bases so far this season. The last player to get 46 bags before the AS break was José Reyes in 2007, when he eventually stole 78 total bases that year. The last player to get to 47 before the break was Vince Coleman in 1990, the Cardinals burner who led the league six years in a row.
Elly De La Cruz 2024 Overview (bRef)
EDC is a strong defender at short with power, so he’s far superior to a player like Vince Coleman. José Reyes isn’t a terrible comparison since he should be able to hit 75+ SB as a shortstop this season. However, José’s career high in homers is 19, and Elly has 15 bombs halfway through this season. To be fair, he’s also not the contact hitter Reyes is, neither by batting average nor by K rate. De La Cruz strikes out more than anyone in the league, leading the MLB with 124K’s in 93 games. He’s a big, lanky guy, and it’s difficult to cover a huge strike zone like that when you’re swinging the bat close to 75 miles an hour. He has a 12.4% barrel rate that ranks in the 85th percentile, a number that appears to be sustainable. The Reds will tolerate the strikeouts if he can play short at his current level, while providing his unique offensive skillet.
Elly De La Cruz 2024 Overview (Baseball Savant)
Even if we conservatively look at Elly as a 20 Homer, 50 stolen base guy who hits .250 and plays shortstop well, there aren’t a ton of historical comps. My favorite comp at shortstop would have to be a young Hanley Ramírez, who had one 20 HR, 50 SB season. We can broaden our horizons by not focusing on short exclusively. The all-time great and stolen base king, Rickey Henderson, put up 20-50 four different times, two with the A’s and the Yankees each respectively. Joe Morgan and César Cedeño each completed the feat three times, while Eric Davis did it twice. NL MVP Ronald Acuña Jr. and Corbin Caroll both pulled it off last season, for the first time in 16 years.
20 HR, 50 SB Seasons Partial List (Stat Muse)
While Acuña Jr. and Carroll are both very talented players, I think it’s more likely than not that 2023 will be the only time they put together a 20-50 season. Ostensibly, we can state that Elly is the only player in the league who could put up 20-25 home runs with 70-80 stolen bases at least two or three times in the next five seasons if he stays healthy. That not only makes him a unicorn in today’s game, it puts him in rarified air on a historical axis as well, with guys like Rickey and Joe Morgan. They’re elite company, but none of them were a 6 '5'' switch hitting shortstop with good defensive metrics. We’ve never really seen a ballplayer like De La Cruz and I can’t wait to see what Elly does over the next decade plus.
https://www.statmuse.com/mlb/ask?q=20+or+more+hr%2C+50+or+more+sb+by+a+player+in+a+season
*Stats are as of 7/12/24