About that...
It was Graham Ashcraft’s season debut, and he had pitched well in his first time back on the bump since landing on the 60-day IL in 2023 with a foot issue. His own throwing error hadn’t helped his cause, but the Cincinnati Reds were firmly in a fistfight with the Philadelphia Phillies in Citizens Bank Park on April 2nd.
Same Phillies club that lost in the World Series in 2022 and in Game 7 of the NLCS last year, they were. Bryce Harper and Schwarber and the lot of them. It was a legit, tone-setting game early in 2024 for a young Cincinnati club looking to make its mark for the first time in [/checks notes] seemingly forever, and a couple balls found their way to their own budding superstar shortstop.
Twice, though, he failed to make the play. A would-be turn of a double play that would have ended an inning allowed a run to score when his throw to 1B crossed up Christian Encarnacion-Strand. Later, a haphazard glove-flip of a ball to 2B went woefully wide, and in a blink the Phils had dropped a 5-spot in the Bottom of the 7th to put the game away.
Elly De La Cruz had egg on his face, and rightfully so. Two plays you absolutely need to see made from the most important defensive position on the field, and two plays that absolutely were not made in big instances.
It was enough to make you wonder if there had just been too much placed on the 22 year old’s plate at this stage. Matt McLain and TJ Friedl, the two best offensive players from the 2023 club, were out hurt. Noelvi Marte, the budding rookie star who was next up for the Reds, had been dinged for an 80-game PED suspension. Jonathan India still looked hobbled from plantar fasciitis, and gone was their stalwart future Hall of Famer who’d been the face of the club for a decade and a half (and the go-to punching bag when ever any casual fan saw the team do things wrong).
I wondered at the time if the errors would sink Elly, who owned just a .686 OPS with 10 K in his first 5 G upon completion of that 9-4 loss in Philadelphia. I hoped at the time that maybe, just maybe, those errors at that critical juncture would be the kind that actually made him bear down and move forward quickly, since they didn’t happen in a game where the plays didn’t matter and he got away with them.
Let’s take a quick gander at what he’s done in the 18 G since that two-error disaster and then I’ll let you look for the words to describe how he’s bounced back from that performance.
That 18 G stretch has seen him go 18 for 58 with 18 R, 3 2B, 7 HR, 17 RBI, 12/19 K/BB, 10 SB, and an overall line of .310/.437/.724 (1.161 OPS). That pace extrapolated over 162 G comes out to - are you ready for this? - 162 R, 63 HR, 153 RBI, 108/171 K/BB, 90 SB.
Only 4 times in his 17 year career did Votto walk more than 108 times in a season. Eric Davis never swiped 90 bags. Nobody, and I mean nobody, has ever swatted that many homers for the Reds in a single season.
Among all qualifying players since April 3rd, only Shohei Ohtani has been a more valuable offensive player than Elly. Shohei’s absurd run has him with a .562 wOBA over that span, with Elly sitting in 2nd at .492. Since April 3rd, though, not a single player in baseball has more homers than Elly’s 7, more runs score than his 18, or more steals than his 10. (And for the record, 43 players have as many or more than his 19 K in that time, too.)
Streaks are streaks, and all MLB players have them. Elly will surely hit another bump in the road, and the pitching around the game will continue to react to his abilities. Hell, they’ve already reached the point where they won’t hardly throw him anything to swing at unless they’re buried in the count, and even then are getting around to just putting him on-base (so he can steal 2B immediately). What’s important about this particular streak, though, is that it began immediately after a night he, we, and everyone would surely like to forget, and instead it seems to have channeled him, refocused him into a whole different stratosphere of capability.
Elly De La Cruz has superstar abilities, and we’re learning right away in 2024 that he may well have a superstar’s timing, too.
