The legend of Elly De La Cruz: What makes the Cincinnati Reds prospect an future star
Preparing for a series against the Dayton Dragons in June, Minnesota Twins minor league pitcher Bobby Milacki wanted to warn his teammates about a player he saw about a year beforehand.
The name to remember, he told them, was Elly De La Cruz.
“I jokingly told my teammates,” Milacki said, “‘this kid is the next coming of Barry Bonds. He’s got power. He’s got speed. He does everything.’ Everybody thought I was crazy.”
De La Cruz, a 6-foot-5 switch-hitting shortstop, is no longer an unknown commodity. He’s electrified every place he’s played. He might be the fastest player on the field, hits 500-foot homers and has the arm to make throws from anywhere.
His stats jump off the page with a .304 batting average, 28 homers, 31 doubles, nine triples, 86 RBI and 47 stolen bases in 120 games. The 20-year-old was the fifth-youngest player in Double-A, and earned player of the month honors his first month in the league. Playing in the Dominican Winter League this offseason, he was named player of the week after his first week while batting ninth in his team’s lineup.
“His first (at-bat) against us," said Milacki, recalling the game in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, "he hit a ground ball right to our right fielder. The right fielder didn’t have to go left or right a whole lot and he turned it into a double like it was nothing. It was just a routine ground ball, a single for anybody else, and he turned it into a double because he plays really hard and he’s fast. He takes about three strides and he’s on second base. You’re like, ‘oh my gosh, what is this guy doing?’”
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De La Cruz was just starting. In the next inning, he lifted a slider for a towering two-run homer to right field. The ball traveled an estimated 430 feet, a 110-mph rocket off his bat.
“We were like wow,” Milacki said. “Then everybody is looking at me, like, OK, I think you’re right.”
'Elly is the best': Everybody has praise for Elly De La Cruz
It was one of those series where De La Cruz showed a bit of everything. He went 9-for-21 in the six games against Milacki’s Cedar Rapids team with two doubles, two homers, six RBI, six runs, five walks and three stolen bases.
“After that,” Milacki said, “we all just say, ‘Elly is the best.’ ”
Whether it’s opponents, teammates, coaches, broadcasters or scouts, there is a growing group of people who say De La Cruz is the best prospect in the sport and unlike almost any player they have seen.
Milacki, a 26-year-old from Lake Havasu City, Arizona, was in the opposite dugout for De La Cruz’s first full series in Low-A during the 2021 season. Milacki remembered thinking the tall, lanky kid had quick hands, but he watched in awe as De La Cruz stretched a double into a triple in the first game, then homered in the second game.
“Honestly, he’s the only true five-tool player I’ve seen,” Milacki said. “It’s funny. The whole time I was saying he was a five-tool player, everybody was like, ‘we don’t know what his arm looks like.’ Then there was a relay at home, and he hosed a guy at the plate. I was like, ‘I’m telling you, this guy is the only true five-tool player I’ve ever seen.’ ”
De La Cruz was added to the Cincinnati Reds’ 40-man roster on Nov. 15 to protect him from being taken in the subsequent Rule 5 Draft. He’ll participate in his first big-league spring training and enter camp as a longshot for the 2023 Opening Day roster.
There are areas he needs to show improvement before he’s an everyday starter in the majors, but he’s excelled at every level to this point.
“Last year when we faced him you could get him out, I feel like, with some breaking balls in the dirt and he would chase,” said Milacki, who has faced De La Cruz three times with a strikeout, a walk and one ball in play that resulted in an error. “I feel like this year, his bat to ball was just off the charts. He wasn’t chasing those pitches as much as he was last year. He’s already growing more mature in finding his pitch.”
There are only a handful of MLB players Milacki considers true five-tool talents, noting he doesn’t think Mike Trout has the arm to qualify. De La Cruz, he says, is the complete package who still hasn’t fully grown into his body. He noticed De La Cruz added muscle from the time he saw him in 2021 to last summer.
“I tell all my friends,” Milacki said, “you have to watch out for this guy. He’s the real deal.”
Chapter two: coaches
Juan Samuel was a three-time All-Star, a dynamic mix of speed and power, during his 16-year playing career. In each of his first four MLB seasons, he totaled at least 30 doubles, 10 triples, 15 homers and 35 stolen bases. No other player in history has more than two such seasons.
He’s been coaching for more than two decades, which included a stint as the Baltimore Orioles’ interim manager in 2010.
Safe to say he’s seen a little bit of everything as a player and coach. The 61-year-old joined the Reds’ organization this year as the bench coach at High-A Dayton, which gave him a chance to work with De La Cruz in the first half of the season.
What stood out about De La Cruz?
“Everything,” said Samuel, laughing. “I haven’t seen a player like that. I can’t think of any I’ve seen in my 40-whatever years I’ve got (in professional baseball) do the things that he does.”
De La Cruz finished his 2022 season with 28 homers and 47 stolen bases, narrowly missing the vaunted 30-30 club, which has been accomplished by just 19 players since the formation of the minor leagues in 1963, according to Baseball America.
Samuel was one of those 19 players. In 1982, as a 21-year-old in Low-A, Samuel hit 38 homers and stole 64 bases.
“Something impressed me, early in the season, it might have been a runner on first and he hit a ball in the gap,” Samuel said. “I’m coaching first base. I saw him in between first and second take a peek at the third-base coach to see if he’s waving the runner. I’m like ‘ooh,’ that’s what you should do. That’s how you’ve got to do it. Seeing him do that at this level, I’m like, OK, he knows. A lot of guys don’t do that. He’s like, I’m running, I’m running, let me see if he sent him, so I don’t have to break my stride.”
De La Cruz’s long strides and aggression on the basepaths remind Samuel of Devon White, the three-time All-Star and seven-time Gold Glove center fielder who stole 346 bases during his 17-year career.
There are times when De La Cruz is a little reckless with his speed, rounding bases when the cutoff man already has the ball, but nobody ever needs to tell him to run harder. Another crucial piece is De La Cruz’s instincts. As much as everyone raves about his five-tool talents, he has the baseball IQ to match.
He stunned everyone with a daring play in Double-A in August. He reached third on a hit to the center-field wall. It should’ve ended as a standup triple once De La Cruz stopped at third, but when he saw the cutoff man softly lob a throw to the base, he dashed to the plate and completed an inside-the-park homer.
“Watching him hit bloop singles in front of outfielders and then just walk into second base, it reminds me of having to play against Billy (Hamilton),” said Brian Garman, the pitching coach at Dayton. “I just remember thinking I’ll never see that again. Come to find out, I do see it again in a kid with every other tool to go with it, it’s not just one-sided he’s fast. This is a legitimate baseball player with every tool and an engine like few we’ve ever been able to see.”
Another part about De La Cruz is he seems to love the big moments. He hit a grand slam in his first big-league spring training game against Milwaukee Brewers reliever Brad Boxberger.
His coaches say there were situations where it was obvious De La Cruz really wanted to be in the batter’s box, like a basketball star holding the ball on the last possession. De La Cruz had a .377 batting average and .456 on-base percentage when he was hitting with runners in scoring position and two outs.
“The kid is electric,” Garman said. “I think the thing that stands out to me about Elly is singles or doubles, he scores from second base on anything. The arm is unbelievable. The range at short is unbelievable. The kid has 11 tools. You can’t say a bad thing about him.”
Coaches know the difficulties in rising through the minor leagues, but it’s hard not to gush about De La Cruz’s potential. When thinking about De La Cruz’s size, his position and the way he moves, Samuel thought a young Alex Rodriguez may have been similar.
It sounds absurd to throw out an A-Rod comparison for a guy who has played two months above A-ball, but here we are.
“It’s unreal, man,” Samuel said. “It’s unreal. I haven’t seen guys do what he does, honestly. His whole game. Sometimes, he hits some home runs like the way you think of somebody who weighs 250. You think he’s skinny, but he’s strong. He uses his legs to hit. His hands are very good. And switch-hitting on top of that. What else do you want?”
Chapter three: teammates
Wes Robertson, a right-handed pitcher, returned to Goodyear, Arizona, for extended spring training after he struggled in Double-A throughout the first month of the 2021 season.
He asked friends when he arrived if there was anybody there who had impressed them as some of the youngest players in the organization prepared for rookie ball.
“They were like,” Robertson said, “ ‘dude, there is this tall and skinny kid who I have never seen in my life, wasn’t invited to spring training and everything is a little different. The way the ball comes off his bat, the way he moves, he’s just really good.’ ”
At the time, few people in baseball had even heard De La Cruz’s name. He wasn’t a heralded signing out of the Dominican Republic, receiving a $65,000 signing bonus when the top international signees command millions.
Robertson immediately recognized the things his friends saw in De La Cruz. Still, this was a workout-based environment. De La Cruz didn’t play in a stateside game until the end of June 2021.
Once the games began, De La Cruz’s talent became even more obvious throughout the organization. All it took was 11 games in rookie ball before De La Cruz was promoted to Low-A. After Robertson joined De La Cruz in Daytona Beach and watched him play in games for about three weeks, he recognized his young teammate with a tweet: “Dude does 2-3 things a night that make me shake my head in amazement. I truly feel like a kid watching him play, excited every time he steps up.”
A lot of the amazement came from De La Cruz’s aggressiveness on the basepaths. Some players react, De La Cruz anticipates. Teams were dumbfounded, Robertson said, when De La Cruz constantly turned routine singles into doubles.
“The last month of the year, every time Elly hit a single up the middle or a ground ball through the three-four hole, the outfielder would sprint to go get the ball because they knew this kid will just go take second base,” Robertson said. “I remember that being something that was just patently ridiculous. I have never seen outfielders behave the way they did when he hit a ball toward them in terms of their aggression."
'Just the type of human being he is, he’s out of this world'
Beyond his physical gifts, De La Cruz’s teammates appreciate his humility. Jose Torres, a third-round pick in the 2021 MLB Draft, shared time at shortstop with De La Cruz in Daytona and Dayton. It’s a situation with built-in competition, and yet, the two became best friends.
“Just the type of human being he is, he’s out of this world,” said the 23-year-old Torres. “When it comes to the baseball field, he’s talented. He’s 6-6, hits the ball 500 feet, throws the (expletive) out of the ball. That’s Elly. He does a lot of good things with his game. What I’m more impressed by is the way he is, how he holds himself.”
When De La Cruz started attracting more attention from publications that cover the minor leagues, his personality didn’t change. His Daytona teammates often saw him chatting with Steven Leyton before games, an older middle infielder on the team.
“The way Elly would be around people and try to be receptive to things was really telling for me,” Robertson said. “It’s like, OK, here is the most talented kid on the field. He has every reason in the world – almost like Hunter Greene. I posted something about Hunter too where Hunter was just so receptive and such a good teammate, same thing with Elly. Elly just never put himself on this pedestal.”
There was a game in Daytona, Robertson remembered, when he was ball boy because he pitched the day before. De La Cruz sat next to him because he was out of the lineup. Robertson is bilingual, which he thought helped the two of them form a closer friendship.
As they sat there, kids ran to De La Cruz to ask for his autograph.
“He goes, ‘everybody wants my autograph now,’ ” Robertson said. “He said it with such a big smile like he wasn’t used to it. I was like, ‘yeah, dude, you have to get used to it because I want your autograph too.’ I don’t even think he knows how good he is. If he does know, he doesn’t show it and that’s really cool.”
Watch De La Cruz on the field and there is a kidlike joy for the game. He’ll stand at shortstop and signal strikes from behind the mound. It’s common to see opponents chatting with him from the basepaths.
“There are a lot of guys that are really good at baseball,” Robertson said, “but he’s got that Fernando Tatis-type look too. He’s got the huge smile. He’s got the swag. That’s going to go a long way. On top of that, he’s just a really good kid.”
Robertson was in the Baltimore Orioles’ farm system during the 2022 season, and he told people it was either Gunnar Henderson, Baseball America’s No. 1 overall prospect, or De La Cruz for guys he thought were the best up-and-coming players.
“(De La Cruz’s) speed and feel for the game, you can’t teach what he does,” Robertson said. “You can’t emulate that. There are a lot of guys that you watch and you’re like I want to try to do that, I can take something from that. You can try to take whatever you want from Elly’s game, but the majority of the stuff he does, you can’t do.”
Chapter four: broadcasters
Justin Rocke, the play-by-play broadcaster for the Daytona Tortugas, searched everywhere, but couldn’t find any information on De La Cruz when the new shortstop was called up from rookie ball in July 2021.
Nothing on Baseball America. Nothing on FanGraphs. Nothing on MLB’s website. He reached out to some other people who closely follow prospects and they hadn’t seen him either.
Instead, his introduction to De La Cruz came when he was putting together his scorebook during batting practice.
“There is this stick banging balls off the roof of the batting cages and the manual scoreboard in left field,” Rocke said. “I’m like I don’t recognize this kid. It must be De La Cruz, but there is no way he is the one doing this because the chair legs I’m sitting on are about as wide as his arms were. By about the fourth game he played with us, I was like how did everybody miss this guy? This kid is unbelievable.”
Four games. Fewer than 20 at-bats. That’s how quickly it became apparent to Rocke that De La Cruz should’ve been listed among the Reds’ best prospects. He was showing all the tools and putting on a show each night.
“I remember there being a game last year in St. Lucie, he’s playing third base, not even shortstop, one of the Mets speedsters hits this ball behind third,” Rocke said. “I felt like I was watching that Manny Machado play at Yankee Stadium when he was still with the Orioles. He just makes a backhand, sets his feet and throws some 92-mph laser across the diamond for the out. You barely even saw the ball going across the diamond. Plays like that. He’s just an absurd athlete.”
Tom Nichols has been a minor league baseball broadcaster for more than three decades, including the last 14 seasons with the Dayton Dragons. He’s watched most Reds players over the last decade at the beginning stages of their professional careers.
Ask him about De La Cruz and he immediately turns to one of his favorite stats of the 2022 season: Dayton went 12 years without a switch hitter homering from both sides of the plate in the same game.
De La Cruz did it twice in three days.
“His right-handed hitting, that was like his weakness,” Nichols said. “When we played the Dodgers’ affiliate, it was a big series, we’re trying to win the first half and they’re trying to catch us – they eventually did catch us. They would bring a lefty in to turn him around to hit right-handed every time he came up in the batting order because they didn’t think he could hit right-handed well enough to hurt them. By the end of his time here, he was hitting as well right-handed as he was left-handed.”
It was hard for announcers from opposing teams to contain their excitement about De La Cruz. Multiple broadcasters talked about how he was the best player they saw this year after watching him in a six-game series.
Some top prospects are great hitters, but De La Cruz’s athleticism makes people see him in a different light.
“People watch him, and it doesn’t matter if it’s for a full game or a two-minute clip during batting practice,” Rocke said, “you take a step back and you go ‘whoa.’ ”
As much as Rocke enjoyed watching De La Cruz play for a few months during the 2021 season, he was just as impressed with his interactions off the field. De La Cruz constantly thanked Rocke and Daytona’s staff when video clips were posted online, so he could send them to family members.
“I remember after he joined us last year, they came out with the updated top-100 prospects,” Rocke said. “I (tweeted) out something, ‘this list is null and void because Elly isn’t on it.’ He sent me a message back, ‘Not yet. In time.’ He wasn’t worried about it. He had faith in himself. He knew he was going to work to get to where he is. Obviously, now he’s a top-20 guy. I think anyone who has seen him would say he’s top-five.”
Chapter five: scouts
Professional baseball scouts, by design, are trying to find flaws in players. Nitpicking is important because it can be the difference between a successful trade or signing, and one that the organization regrets.
Survey scouts for an opinion about De La Cruz and it’s startling how many positive comments he generates.
“He’s the most athletic player I’ve ever seen,” said an American League scout, granted anonymity to speak freely about a player from another team, who swears he doesn’t speak in hyperbole. “I could throw out some legendary names of athletes, but I’d rather not because I don’t want to put extra pressure on a kid. But I’ve never seen anybody even close with his athleticism to be quite honest.”
Elly De La Cruz drawing comparisons to former Reds OF Eric Davis
Another scout said De La Cruz’s speed was reminiscent of Deion Sanders. Multiple scouts mentioned Eric Davis as a comparison.
“If you really want to really break it down, who are you comparing him to?” the AL scout said. “Who runs faster in professional baseball? I don’t know that anybody does. Nobody hit a ball over 500 feet this year except for him and C.J. Cron. If you watch him throw, he’s got an 80-(grade) arm. He can throw with anybody.”
There was a game in June when De La Cruz was playing at Dayton. He was on first base and there was a runner on third. In a two-strike count, a wild pitch rolled about 15 feet from the catcher, allowing the run to score. De La Cruz, with his speed and smarts, ran from first to third without breaking stride or even eliciting a throw from the catcher. Even the third baseman looked surprised to see him running into third.
“The one thing that stood out is he has some instincts to play the game, which for me over the years, that’s the one hurdle that you can’t really teach,” said a National League scout. “And when they’ve got it, they’ve got it. It starts enhancing their abilities and that’s kind of what I saw in him.”
The biggest weakness in De La Cruz’s game is how often he strikes out. He struck out in 31% of his plate appearances in Single-A, High-A and Double-A, which would be one of the highest rates in the majors. He didn’t draw many walks (8%), which bogged down his on-base percentage.
It’s an area he needs to improve, but the scouts polled weren’t overly concerned by it. He should continue to add strength, which will help improve his body control.
The AL scout thinks some of it stems from how fast De La Cruz moved through the minor leagues. In 13 months, he went from playing his first game in Arizona rookie ball to Double-A. Players don’t fly through farm systems faster than that.
"Switch hitters have such an advantage because they are in the lineup all the time," the AL scout said. "There are a million guys without his tools that ended up hitting, the Omar Vizquels of the world, because they played defense and were switch hitters, so they got 3,000 at-bats faster than anybody else or however many it takes."
The NL scout watched De La Cruz several times over the last two years, including in the instructional league in 2021 after his stint at Daytona.
De La Cruz looked “overmatched” as he struck out in a pinch-hitting opportunity in one game. The next day, a night game on the backfields against the Dodgers, De La Cruz hit a double right-handed and homered left-handed in consecutive at-bats.
“It was kind of comical,” the NL scout said. “They just poured it above his hands, and he just couldn’t get to it. The next day, they tried it again and he smoked it. It’s a snapshot scout thing from one night to the next day. He made an adjustment, knew what to look for and got to it. I think that bodes well thinking that he could eventually start cutting into those strikeouts a little bit over time.”
Will Elly De La Cruz stick at shortstop?
A popular question, even among scouts, is whether De La Cruz can stick at shortstop. Cal Ripken Jr. was one of the first big shortstops at 6-foot-4, though Carlos Correa and Corey Seager subsequently made it more common. De La Cruz is listed at 6-5, though he may even be an inch taller than that.
“I’m a fan of him at shortstop,” the AL scout said. “We help players so much with analytics and getting guys in the right spot. I think his range is exceptional. Obviously, I think his arm is exceptional. He may make some errors, but he’s going to make up for it with the plus plays, for sure.”
Said the NL scout: “I didn’t see any reason why he can’t continually stay at shortstop.”
It's one thing that De La Cruz shows all the tools, but what makes him different is it all shows up in games. There are almost no moments when the game looks too fast for him or he's uncomfortable. He may be the youngest player on the field, but one scout noted he wasn't afraid to get after his teammates a little bit if things weren't being done correctly in batting practice.
“I just think this guy is a superstar,” said the AL scout, “and I don’t think it’s a big leap for me to say that.”
The scout isn't alone. The Reds haven't had a position player prospect generate as much excitement since Jay Bruce debuted in 2008.
De La Cruz’s time in the big leagues is coming, perhaps as early as next summer. The player nobody knew two years ago, is now one of the most talked-about prospects in the sport.