Elly De La Cruz is acing the 2026 MLB season
· Yahoo Sports
The Cincinnati Reds sit 8 games under the .500 mark, mired in last place in the National League Central for yet another year. That, mind you, all comes after they surged to nearly 10 games over .500 during the season’s first month.
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Only the hapless Colorado Rockies and homeless Athletics have a worse run differential than Cincinnati, who at -122 sit a full 100 runs worse than the Pittsburgh Pirates – the occupants of 4th place in the division. Shall we say, it has not been a good year in the Queen City.
For one Elly De La Cruz, though, things are all seemingly falling into place.
He figured out how to master left-handed pitching, hitting a league best .350 against southpaws as part of an overall .350/.417/.657 mashing of them (who’s 188 wRC+ ranks as 2nd best in all of Major League Baseball). Just this week he unleashed a 102 mph relay throw that’s the fastest by an infielder in the statcast era. He set a career high with 26 homers while bashing homers in five straight games, in the process setting the mark for the most homers in a single season by a switch-hitter.
On the whole, he’s hitting .283/.362/.511 with 26 homers and 25 steals in 567 PA, and that’s despite missing time earlier in the year with a hamstring problem. He’s been a 5.0 bWAR per Baseball Reference, while FanGraphs has him at 5.6 fWAR – the fourth best position player in the game this year (despite, ahem, missing that time).
All told, it seemed as good a time as any to ask you how he’s done so far in 2026 earlier this week, and all he did since I opened that poll was continue on his epic dinger streak while facing the two best teams in the sport (Milwaukee and the Dodgers). Unsurprisingly, I guess, you all think he’s been doing A-OK.
If anything, what’s notable here is that 44% of respondents think he’s somehow not been an A-grade player this season. Perhaps that’s them voting on a curve knowing that there’s still so much that Elly has yet to tap into in this, just his age-24 season, and only after he reaches those higher heights will we truly be able to give him an ‘A’ on his own standards.
Regardless, Cincinnati’s superstar shortstop is just that – a bona fide superstar in today’s game, and it seems he’s only now just busting out of his shell.
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