'It's, wow': Elly De La Cruz has kept evolving, and now he's a two-time All-Star

PHILADELPHIA — For all of the jaw-dropping home runs, the line drives with elite exit velocities, the throws where he shows his rocket arm and the plays on the bases that you’ve never seen before, the plays by Elly De La Cruz that received the biggest reaction inside the Reds’ organization this season have been ones that won't make the highlight reel.

They’re opposite field singles like the ones he produced last Friday. They’re takes on tough pitches. They’re heads up plays on the bases or in the field, like the way he threw a runner out at the plate last Saturday.

De La Cruz has been one of the most talented players in MLB since he debuted in 2023. This season, the Reds’ coaching staff wanted to see the game slow down for him.

De La Cruz’s leap in 2025 has been about building upon the foundation that his rare athletic traits have provided him. He’s heading to his second consecutive All-Star Game, and he’s a better all-around player than he was a year ago.

“He’s a guy that just continues to learn to play the game,” Reds president of baseball operations Nick Krall said. “You’re seeing an evolution and maturation with what he has done. His at-bat quality — you saw (last Friday) how he’s using the opposite field to get runs in as opposed to (thinking) I’ve got to muscle up and try to hit a homer to put us way up. Just taking your bases when you get them. Stealing bases, it’s not about stealing the base. It’s about understanding the situations, why I’m doing this and understanding how this affects the team. That’s been a big thing that’s really fun to watch.”

De La Cruz was an MVP candidate in 2024. But still, at the end of that season, current Reds bench coach and then interim manager Freddie Benavides spoke with De La Cruz about the areas where he had to improve.

After Terry Francona became the Reds’ manager last October, he visited with De La Cruz in the Dominican Republic. Francona told De La Cruz that he wanted to see him develop into the best player on the best team in baseball.

While De La Cruz still isn’t perfect, he works as hard as anybody and keeps finding ways to improve.

“He’s growing up,” Francona said. “One of the things he has to battle is everyone always talking about his ceiling. I just want to impress upon him that if we see it in the confines of the game, it’s really going to be special. That’s all I’ve ever told him. He’s doing a really good job.”

The story of De La Cruz’s 2025 season starts with how he has played in every single game. His goal since spring training has been to play all 162. Even when he was banged up in late May and early June, De La Cruz powered through. And it was during that stretch that he started playing his best baseball of the season.

“When you have a chance to be a potential superstar and he’s playing (every single day), that’s a game changer for us,” Krall said. “The way he works, the way he goes about it, how he gets his rest in, how he goes about everything he does. You saw it with Joey Votto. Joey Votto was one of the best I’ve ever seen with it. Elly has a lot of those same qualities. He wants to be a better and better player.”

De La Cruz is a different style of hitter than he was in 2024. In 2025, he’s hitting .277 with a .836 OPS (both are significantly improved from last season). My favorite stat of De La Cruz’s 2025 season is that he has scored the third-most runs in MLB, trailing only Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge. It’s a very simple stat, but the point of the game is to score runs after all.

Hitting coach Chris Valaika said that the overall theme of De La Cruz’s season is “earning back the strike zone.” De La Cruz isn’t chasing nearly as much, so he’s getting more pitches to hit. And when he gets those pitches, he’s doing plenty of damage.

“He’s doing the things that we’ve talked about since before spring training,” Valaika said. “He has to earn the strike zone. Early on in the season, maybe there was a little passiveness to it. We’re seeing him with 18 homers before the break and close to 60 RBI. It’s the evolution of being patient with him, trusting his eyes and knowing the strike zone. When to take his chances to do damage.”

Dig deeper than the counting stats, and you’ll find specific, tangible signs of his development.

He has the ninth most-improved strikeout rate in MLB, and there has been a statistically elite level of improvement at cutting down on his chasing pitches. He’s now statistically seeing more strikes than he did last season, and he’s making more contact on pitches in the zone. He’s also swinging at more pitches in the strike zone and swinging at the first pitch more often.

De La Cruz is making much higher quality contact (he went from ranking in the 66^th percentile in xWOBA to the 73^rd percentile). His barrel rate is up, which means that he’s hitting rocket line drives much more often.

To sum it up, he’s swinging at more strikes and making much higher quality contact.

“Overall, his overall swing rate and the heart pitches, when he is getting pitches to do damage on, he’s not missing them,” Valaika said. “That’s probably the biggest change. He’s a little bit more consistent with his mechanics but also stubborn with his approach. When he gets pitches, he’s not off-time with them.”

De La Cruz already has more home runs against breaking pitches than he had in all of 2024, and he has the same amount of home runs against off-speed pitches as he did last season. He’s a completely different hitter when teams try to throw him off with a secondary pitch.

Valaika said that De La Cruz is seeing the benefits from a tweak that De La Cruz made to his swing entering the season.

“Simplifying his move, we’re not seeing him have that big crash forward like he has had in the past,” Valaika said. “Him going to that early toe tap is helping his strike zone judgment. His pitch selection. Seeing him control the strike zone as well as he has.”

Most sluggers pull a lot of high fly balls. De La Cruz pulls high fly balls at an incredibly low rate, and he’s still earning plenty of power. That’s a product of how much the quality of his at-bats have improved.

Krall stressed the importance of two opposite field base hits last Friday. Benavides recently raved about the ninth-inning opposite field single that capped off a long at-bat between De La Cruz and Padres closer Robert Suarez.

“He has great at-bats overall,” Benavides said. “We always used to talk about, you’d watch him, and he’d get hot for a while. Now, he’s just hot. That’s what he’s supposed to do. He’s supposed to play like that. That’s what star players do. He’s really, really getting better daily. It’s starting to come together.”

On top of all of that, De La Cruz’s right-handed swing is better than it has ever been.

“He’s doing it from both sides,” Valaika said. “It’s not just managing one side. It’s a credit to how athletic he is. It’s also going back to how intelligent and cerebral he is. He knows how to put the work in on both sides. He knows how to prepare for the games. Being as young as he is, his routine daily and his talks with us, how he’s preparing every day are lightyears ahead of what you’d think a 23-year-old would be.”

One of the big areas where De La Cruz still has to grow is defensively. He still commits too many errors. He’s long levered, which means that there’s a greater margin for error when his mechanics aren’t perfect. Francona and Benavides have also talked about the importance of De La Cruz developing his “internal clock” and having the right timing for the situation at hand.

“It’s knowing to never be surprised,” Benavides said. “He had a play (last Monday) that he had to rush a bit and he shouldn’t have to. It’s the big thing we always talk about. Keep a routine play routine. Keep it routine. Get the ground ball, move your feet and make a good throw. Simple. He’s starting to get better. There are still things you want him to improve at faster, but it’s a process he has to go through during the games to experience it.”

Benavides also stresses the positives from De La Cruz this season. He says that De La Cruz is making more of the routine plays at shortstop.

“The focus has been better, which has helped,” Benavides said. “He’s improving daily. That’s one thing we want from him.”

De La Cruz has more room to get better. Francona told him that the play in extra innings against the Yankees where De La Cruz didn’t know the score as he ran the bases was the type of mistake that the best players in baseball don’t make. De La Cruz acknowledged his mistake and promised it wouldn’t happen again.

“He’s a young player,” Krall said. “He’s still kind of learning how to play the game and how to be a top player in the game. You’re watching him every day continue to get better. He wants to play every day. He works his butt off. Those things you can’t teach. The coaching staff really appreciates that.”

De La Cruz doesn’t make excuses, even when he could have made them earlier this season when he wasn’t at 100%.

“His body takes a pounding,” Benavides said. “For him, he gets here early and gets his body ready to play daily. People come to see guys like that. He stays on the field. He takes pride in that.”

When De La Cruz was a bit banged up, he did a good job of knowing when he should push for the extra base and when to hit the brakes a little bit. De La Cruz stole 67 bases last season, but he only has 22 steals through the first half of 2025.

“We talked about the governor when he was hurting a couple weeks ago with his hamstring,” Benavides said. “You watched it. Tito talked to him about (running) when we need it. He knows. He knows who the outfielders are we’re playing. He knows when he can score easy and he just jogs. His 80% or 70% is faster than a lot of guys, so it’s good.”

These are things that you can’t learn in the minor leagues. These are things that you can’t even really learn in the big leagues until you’ve established yourself as a star. There’s attention on De La Cruz from the minute he walks in the door. With that, there’s added pressure.

He handles it all with a smile.

“He’s growing immensely,” Benavides said. “His game has gotten better daily. Every day, you watch him. Just watch the at-bats. That’s where you see it more and more. He’s understanding what pitchers are doing and what they’re trying to do. It’s, wow. The maturity is beyond its years.”