In Elly De La Cruz, the Cincinnati Reds finally have their next superstar

Elly’s breakout 2024 featured a set of skills found nowhere else in the game.

The 2016-2017 international signing period was one for the record books for the usually spendthrift Cincinnati Reds. They didn’t just exceed their $5.163 million bonus pool amount, they rocketed past it nearly sixfold by signing shortstops Alfredo Rodriguez ($7 million bonus) and Jose Israel Garcia ($5 million) alongside pitcher Vladimir Gutierrez ($4.75 million) and, in the process, incurring roughly $12.5 million in overage penalties just to do so.

Some $30 million was spent with a clear emphasis placed on a potential shortstop of the future, a void that had been left largely unfilled since the glory days of Davey Concepcion and Barry Larkin. As the 2022 regular season neared, all signs suggested they finally had one in-house and nearly ready to go. Garcia, who had changed his name the previous year to Jose Barrero to honor his late mother, had risen to No. 33 on Baseball America’s rankings of the Top 100 overall prospects in the game on the heels of a brilliant 2021 campaign that saw him hit a combined .303/.380/.539 with 19 homers between Double-A Chattanooga and Triple-A Louisville.

Barrero continued his hot hitting at Triple-A to begin 2022, and Cincinnati gave him his first call to the big leagues in August of that year to completely disastrous results.

Barrero’s struggles to date have since become well known, and he’s now in the St. Louis Cardinals organization after unsuccessful stints with the Reds and Texas Rangers. He did not end up being the shortstop of the future in Cincinnati, but his legacy - and that of the entire 2016-2017 international signing class - might well end up being etched in stone thanks to who it forced the Reds to uncover in its wake.

While slapped by Major League Baseball with multiple years of spending limits after their wild (and misfired) spree, they couldn’t sign anyone in the 2018 international class for more than $300,000. It forced them to shop in a much different way that year, perhaps focusing on prospects that didn’t fit the traditional mold that otherwise would have them seeking - and receiving - bonuses well beyond what the Reds were allowed to spend.

Along the way their scouts returned to the Niche Baseball Academy in the Dominican Republic, a Santo Domingo hot spot that once produced superstar Juan Soto. While there to check out other players, scouts Enmanuel Cartagena and Richard Jimenez found a lanky, raw switch-hitter with a hell of an arm whose status as an unpolished project likely meant they’d be able to sign him below their penalty-inflicted threshold.

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On July 18th, 2018, the Reds announced they’d signed that 16-year old - a kid named Elly De La Cruz - for a mere $65,000 signing bonus. Listed generously at 6’2” and 150 lbs at the time, he already flashed top-tier speed, a good arm, and projectible glovework, but it’s safe to say neither the Reds nor the rest of the baseball world had any real idea what Elly would become in such short order.

(Short order is carrying the weight here.)

By the time Elly had become a universal Top 100 prospect prior to the same 2022 season that had many already putting Barrero’s name in pen as Cincinnati’s shortstop, Elly had grown to easily 6’6” tall, with many around the game positing that was conservative. His game had taken off with his height, and word began to spread about this shortstop who was hitting 500+ foot homers, running the bases faster than anyone before, and throwing 100 mph lasers across the diamond at the most valued defensive position on the diamond.

Elly’s rise wasn’t meteoric, but it was close. He sat out the 2020 season altogether due to the COVID pandemic, and was one of the rare birds who seemingly improved more during that off-year than he ever could have by simply progressing through another year of minor league ball. When said pandemic began, he was a low-bonus, average-sized infielder with a mere 186 plate appearances at the Dominican Summer League under his belt, one where he’d hit a lone homer in 43 games and had been thrown out stealing more times than he’d been successful. By the end of his first full pro season in 2021, he’d reached 6’6” and cracked Top 100 lists he’d never leave, his trajectory to the big leagues a mere matter of when, not if.

Statcast and Baseball Savant weren’t created for Elly, but you could make a valid claim they were created in case of Elly. Tracking such measurables as foot speed, arm strength, and exit velocity - the three most potent tools any position player can possess - gives the casual observer an easy way to find out who is the fastest, who throws hardest, and who knocks the stitches out of the ball better than anyone else on the planet. As De La Cruz rounded into form during the 2024 regular season - his first full season in the big leagues at age 22 - his legend grew as Statcast began to quantify him.

You can rightfully point out that sprint speed means nothing if you don’t know how to run the bases, that exit velocity is merely a fun tool if the balls don’t fly over the fence, or that arm strength is irrelevant if the throws to 1B go wide. Baseball has, and never will be a game where world-class sprinters and the world’s strongest simply get by on innate gift alone. That, though, is where the burgeoning legend of Elly De La Cruz is beginning to take form.

Elly didn’t just rank as one of the three fastest baserunners by sprint speed during the 2024 season, he led all of Major League Baseball with 67 steals (and his 102 combined steals since the start of the 2024 season also ranks first). His 119.2 mph maximum exit velocity during his initial call-up in the 2023 season ranked in the top 1% of all players in the game, and his 71 extra-base hits in 2024 tied him for 11th best in the game with the likes of Yordan Alvarez and Anthony Santander. And while his 29 errors were both glaring and the most of any player in the game in 2024, his 15 Outs Above Average suggests his range and arm were tasking him with making plays that would have been base hits past his peers altogether.

There are aspects to his game that need refining, as is the case for every 22-year old getting their feet wet at the highest level. He struck out 219 times in 696 PA last year, the most of any player in the game, and that paired with his high error count have drawn the ire of many. That FanGraphs still tabbed him as the 9th most valuable player in the game in 2024 with 6.4 fWAR only goes to fuel the excitement behind him, as he managed to be deemed that remarkable despite flaws that, in theory, will begin to be rectified with more time and experience.

We didn’t just witness peak Elly, we witnessed the tip of the iceberg.

Elly’s 2024 season saw him become the first 20-60 shortstop in MLB history, and he breezed by those thresholds with 25 homers and 67 steals. With that as a baseline, soaring to a 30-70, or even 40-80 season doesn’t seem out of the question for Cincinnati’s shortstop of both the present and future, finally giving Reds fans something tangible on which to dream as they near the 30 year anniversary of their last victory in a postseason series.

If anyone can lead the Reds out of the doldrums and back into the limelight, it’s Elly De La Cruz and his one of a kind blend of power, speed, and defense. The baseball world, if it wasn’t already, is officially on notice.

Photo by Dylan Buell/Getty Images