Elly De La Cruz Leading Cavalry To Bring Reds Back To Contention

There are a number of factors that have led to the historic weakness of baseball’s two central divisions this season. First of all, none of those 10 teams have mega-payrolls. Secondly, a number of those clubs have recently been in either “tank” or rebuild mode, depending on your perspective. And thirdly and perhaps most importantly, the balanced schedule has been re-introduced, and the stronger of these teams are no longer able to fatten up on the weaker.

As play began on Sunday, no central team was better than three games over .500, and despite the general awfulness of the group only one club – the Kansas City Royals – can already be labeled a hopeless non-contender.

When incredibly flawed clubs like the Pirates, Brewers and Twins are on top of their divisions, isolated positives can create legitimate rays of hope for these relative uncompetitive ballclubs. But a wave of talented youngsters, led by arguably the best prospect in the game today, reaching the majors one after the other over a short period of time? That’s enough to rekindle a long-dormant fanbase and catapult the Cincinnati Reds into legitimate contention.

It was only two years ago that the Reds went 83-79 with a decent offense led by a resurgent Joey Votto, outfielders Jesse Winker and Nick Castellanos and Rookie of the Year second baseman Jonathan India and a deep veteran-laden starting rotation fronted by Luis Castillo, Tyler Mahle, Sonny Gray and Wade Miley. Instead of keeping the band together and attempting to continue to make incremental steps forward in 2021, GM Nick Krall blew the thing up.

Castellanos and Miley left in free agency, Winker and Castillo were dealt to the Mariners and Mahle and Gray were sent to the Twins. The short-term pain appears to be about to yield long-term gain as the Reds hit a home run with the return on these acquisitions.

Coming over from the Mariners were shortstop prospects Edwin Arroyo and Noelvi Marte. Neither have reached the majors yet, but both are big-time prospects. Arriving from the Twins were current Reds’ 1B/3B Spencer Steer and Triple-A 3B Christian Encarnacion-Strand, who is currently tearing apart his level.

And the Reds have also taken care of business in the draft and in international free agency. They took SS Matt McLain 17th overall in the 2021 draft, and he recently settled in as their starter at the position at the major league level. Most important was a relatively minor $60K signing out of the Dominican Republic back in 2018. Raw 6’6” wunderkind Elly De La Cruz has gradually harnessed his explosive physical tools and hit the ground running after being called up to the bigs last week.

This is all very significant, as coming into this season the main reason for optimism in Cincinnati was their talented young starting rotation fronted by Hunter Greene, Nick Lodolo and Graham Ashcraft. While hopes remain quite high for this trio, they have largely been waylaid by injury and ineffectiveness early this season. The emergence of the position player nucleus gives Reds’ fans legitimate hope for a quality all-around club in the not-too-distant future.

Each year I prepare an ordered list of top minor league position player prospects based on production relative to age, level and league. It’s not adjusted for position, ballpark or other contextual factors, and while I tend to take the player rankings with a grain of salt and treat it as a master follow list, it has a pretty solid track record of identifying eventual MLB performers.

Steer, India, McLain, De La Cruz, Arroyo, Marte, Encarnacion-Strand and current Reds’ utilityman Jose Barrero all made my list, most of them more than once. India (#75 in 2019), De La Cruz (#18 in 2022), Arroyo (#36 in 2022), Marte (#49 in 2022), Encarnacion-Strand (#78 in 2022, #67 in 2021) and Barrero (#54 in 2021) all made the Top 100 at least once, with De La Cruz and Encarnacion-Strand certain to make the upper reaches of the list again in 2023.

On top of all of this, the Reds have a bunch of talented young outfielders like Will Benson and TJ Hopkins jockeying for position with not-so-old incumbents like TJ Friedl, Jake Fraley and Stuart Fairchild for playing time.

Right now, the Reds are deploying McLain at shortstop, De La Cruz primarily at 3B, moving Steer across the diamond to first and keeping India at 2B. That probably wouldn’t be my ideal alignment – I’d keep Elly at SS as long as humanly possible, move India to 3B where I think he’d fit best long-term, and run McLain around the field, starting him most days. No matter – it’s quite the abundance of potential impact talent, all coming of age at once. McLain is hitting over .300 with gaps power and De La Cruz has shown flashes of his explosiveness in his first week in the majors – these guys are ready.

The Reds play in one of the most hitter-friendly parks in the game, and are coming out of a phase where they were unable to take advantage of that. When De La Cruz squares one up in the air, there isn’t a ballpark that can contain him. While he may be the only true superstar in this group, many of the other newcomers are candidates to be at least average offensive players. And a bunch of average offensive players can put up some real numbers in Great American Ball Park.

Once they get their top starting pitchers back and on track, the Cincinnati Reds could quickly become must-see TV, and perhaps even give the NL Central a legitimately good baseball team.