America’s Team? How Elly De La Cruz and the Reds are rocketing onto the MLB radar

Ten days is not a long time in baseball. A perfect 10 days doesn’t guarantee that you’ll get even close to the playoff hunt. A winless 10 days won’t necessarily keep you out. To watch the Cincinnati Reds, though, is to wonder whether 10 days can change everything.

It started June 5, when the Reds beat the Milwaukee Brewers behind the debut of starting pitcher Andrew Abbott … and then summoned Elly De La Cruz to the big leagues for the next night’s game. The 21-year-old shortstop — switch-hitting and seemingly spring-loaded — is a consensus top-five prospect in baseball thanks to an astounding combination of power and speed, along with rapid recent improvement in his plate discipline.

In his first game, De La Cruz smashed a 112 mph double for the Reds’ hardest-hit ball of the season. In his second game, he hit a home run to the outer limits of Great American Ball Park. In his fifth game, he sprinted from first, through a stop sign, all the way home in 11.48 seconds and declared himself “the fastest man in the world,” a claim Statcast promptly confirmed (at least if we’re talking about the baseball world).

By Wednesday night, the Reds believed. They had swept the hapless Kansas City Royals to earn their fifth straight win, and Patrick Mahomes had asked De La Cruz to trade autographed memorabilia. They were 8-2 in their past 10 games and a respectable 16-13 since the May 15 call-up of Matt McLain, the other top shortstop prospect who stood alongside second baseman Jonathan India for the postgame interview.

The duo don't really take the bait to verbally explain why the Reds have dubbed themselves “America’s Team." They just exude the sort of grinning confidence that makes it feel self-explanatory.

This weekend, the Reds further elucidated the idea on the field, sweeping the long-dominant Houston Astros on the road to run their winning streak to eight games. More importantly, their 11-6 June record suddenly has them just half a game out of first place in the tumultuous NL Central, months after Phil Castellini, the public face of the team ownership group, implied they had no chance.

That fun has succeeded in drawing eyes to something that has been brewing for far more than 10 days: a return to relevance, perhaps faster than expected. Here are five reasons to pay attention to the Reds’ rollicking turnaround.

1. Elly De La Cruz arrives with otherworldly talents

Let’s let the highlights do the talking. His first homer was so loud the Reds broadcasters exclaimed, “Oh, goodness! That ball had a family!” as it blazed over all but the last row of seats.

Pretty much any ball hit by De La Cruz that doesn’t leave the park has the potential to turn into a triple. And on defense, he throws harder than any other infielder. The guy is a Statcast fever dream brought to life.

It’s not always going to be homers, steals and photoshoots for De La Cruz, whose batting line is a solid .273/.360/.432 after he bounced back from three straight hitless games and a night off with a strong close to the Astros series. But it’s nearly impossible to come away from his first 11 games without serious optimism.

The 6-foot-5 marvel is mostly playing third base as McLain mans shortstop, which is the latest example of his willingness and capability to learn on the fly. Players with his length often struggle to make consistent contact, and De La Cruz is running a 70.5% contact rate that won’t set him up for batting titles. What he can (or must) do is master the strike zone so his swings come predominantly on strikes, where he can maximize damage.

Early on, De La Cruz is carrying a too-high 34% strikeout rate, but he’s also demonstrating the gains that bolstered his prospect stock from “enticing toolbox” to “potential superstar.” He has taken walks in 12% of his plate appearances, thanks to a selective eye at the plate that, with the continuous adjustments that helped lower his strikeout rate each of the past two seasons, should ultimately serve him well as he sets what could be an extremely high level of performance.

2. There’s more young talent here — and still on the way

So McLain, the guy playing shortstop ahead of De La Cruz? He’s only 23 years old himself, a first-round draft pick in 2021 out of UCLA who torched the minors and, thus far, has torched the majors, too. He’s batting .324/.374/.507 in his first 28 games, good for a 132 OPS+. He was the Reds' No. 9 prospect coming into the season, per Baseball Prospectus.

Two other top prospects are already making contributions. Left-handed starter Andrew Abbott, who goes Friday in Houston, has yet to allow a run in 17 2/3 major-league innings, wielding big strikeout stuff that also produces a few too many walks. Versatile infielder Spencer Steer debuted in 2022 and has nine homers and a 121 OPS+ in 69 games this season.

Steer came over from the Minnesota Twins organization during what looks like a tremendously savvy 2022 trade deadline for Reds general manager Nick Krall. In a trade that sent mid-rotation starter Tyler Mahle to Minnesota, the Reds got both Steer and Christian Encarnacion-Strand, a corner infield prospect who is banging down the door to the big leagues. In 48 games at Triple-A, he is batting .348 with 17 homers.

All of this is beginning to create the best problem a baseball team can have: more talented players than positions. The Reds are one call-up away from having five good, young infielders: De La Cruz, McLain, Steer, Encarnacion-Strand and India, the 2021 NL Rookie of the Year and apparent team leader who slots in at second base, at least for now. That doesn’t even account for team legend Joey Votto, who is working his way back on a rehab assignment.

3. The Reds can really run

De La Cruz certainly adds to this, but the Reds have been successfully burning up the base paths all season.

Under the tutelage of Collin Cowgill, a former major-leaguer who joined the coaching staff this season, the Reds are second in MLB in stolen bases (with 76) and first in overall baserunning value, according to FanGraphs’ calculations.

Younger teams across baseball, including the Reds, are capitalizing on their athleticism with the new rules designed to boost the running game. That’s at least a piece of the equation — along with their ballpark’s hitter-friendly dimensions — that has the Reds creeping into the top 10 in runs per game.

4. A good bullpen can paper over a lot of weaknesses

Burgeoning teams with relatively small margins for error often see their immediate results hinge on the success or failure of their bullpens. So while hot-shot young hitters are leading the charge in Cincinnati, the bullpen deserves a lot of credit for the team’s improving record.

Led by closer Alexis Diaz and a barrage of waiver claims and scrap-pile pickups, the Reds bullpen ranks fifth in baseball in park-adjusted ERA-. Bullpen-fueled success can be fleeting, but the Reds are in position to be less reliant on Diaz & Co. as they work more prestige prospects to the majors.

5. A new day can dawn quickly, if the powers that be let it

In the muddled NL Central, the Reds are in second, just a half-game back of the Milwaukee Brewers, with a full two games of separation between them and the sinking Pittsburgh Pirates. They now have 12.3% playoff odds, per FanGraphs, after sitting below the 2% mark just a month ago. It wouldn’t be shocking if those odds increase further as more talent arrives in Cincinnati (and perhaps some veteran talent departs St. Louis and Chicago).

The recent burst of exciting wins has also stirred the fan base in ways that can’t be calculated to the decimal, brightening the sky over a classic baseball city that had been weighed down by Castellini’s cynicism and not-so-veiled relocation threat in 2022. Now, Ken Rosenthal is asking whether the Reds might buy at the trade deadline, and Krall is leaving that promising door open.

“There’s nothing I see that is going to impede us from making an acquisition,” Krall told The Athletic.

It’s hard to miss the sliding door parallels to the Oakland A’s, whose concurrent, improbable, seven-game winning streak was cheered on by a reverse-boycotting crowd as team owner John Fisher executed the political maneuvers to move the team to Las Vegas with MLB’s apparent support, a glimpse at what happens when Castellini’s bluster is brought to grisly, real-world fruition.

So what can 10 days do? Nothing, you might conclude from the bleak saga in Oakland. Or, alternatively, they can do everything that sports are supposed to do. Cincinnati’s veteran catcher Luke Maile, a native of the area who has been credited with popularizing the “America’s Team” bit in the clubhouse, seems to get that.

“It doesn’t guarantee anything,” he told The Athletic’s C. Trent Rosecrans while explaining the team’s new moniker, “but it’s a hell of a lot of fun.”