The 2016-2017 international signing period was a record-breaking one for the normally frugal Cincinnati Reds. They not only exceeded their $5.163 million bonus pool amount, but nearly sixfolded it by signing shortstops Alfredo Rodriguez ($7 million bonus) and Jose Israel Garcia ($5 million), as well as pitcher Vladimir Gutierrez ($4.75 million), incurring approximately $12.5 million in overage penalties in the process.
Some $30 million was spent, with an obvious emphasis on a future shortstop, a position that had gone mostly unfilled since Davey Concepcion and Barry Larkin’s glory days. As the 2022 regular season approached, all signs indicated that they now had one in-house and almost ready to go. Garcia, had
changed his name the previous year to Jose Barrero to honor his late mother, had risen to No. 33 on Baseball America’s rankings of the Top 100 overall prospects in the game on the heels of a brilliant 2021 campaign in which he hit a combined.303/.380/.539 with 19 homers between Double-A Chattanooga and Triple-A Louisville Barrero continued his good hitting in Triple-A to begin 2022, and Cincinnati handed him his first call to the big leagues in August of that year, with disastrous results.
Barrero’s troubles to date have been well documented, and he is now with the St. Louis Cardinals following disastrous spells with the Reds and Texas Rangers. He didn’t end up being the future shortstop.
Cincinnati, but his legacy – and that of the whole 2016-2017 foreign signing class – may well be carved in stone as a result of who it pushed the Reds to uncover in its aftermath. While Major League Baseball imposed multiple-year spending limits following their wild (and unsuccessful) spree, they were unable to contract anyone in the 2018 foreign class for more than $300,000. It drove them to shop in a very different way that year, possibly focusing on prospects who didn’t fit the typical model, which would have otherwise resulted in them asking – and receiving – bonuses much exceeding what the Reds could afford.
Along the way, their scouts returned to the Niche Baseball Academy in the Dominican Republic, a popular Santo Domingo destination that Juan Soto was once produced as a superstar. While there to look at other players, scouts Enmanuel Cartagena and Richard Jimenez discovered a lanky, raw switch-hitter with a hell of an arm whose position as an unpolished project certainly meant he could be signed below their penalty-inflicted threshold. On July 18th, 2018, the Reds announced that they had signed a 16-year-old called Elly De La Cruz for a signing bonus of $65,000. Elly, who was listed as 6’2″ and 150 pounds at the time, already demonstrated top-tier speed, a good arm, and projectible glovework, but it’s safe to say neither the Reds nor the rest of the baseball world had any idea what he would become in such short order.
By the time Elly had become a universal Top 100 prospect prior to the 2022 season, many had already penciled Barrero in as Cincinnati’s shortstop, Elly had grown to easily 6’6″, with many in the game arguing it was conservative. His game had taken off with his height, and word spread about this shortstop who was hitting 500-foot home runs, sprinting the bases quicker than anybody else, and throwing 100-mph rockets around the diamond from the most valuable defensive position on the diamond.
Elly’s ascension was not meteoric, but it came close. He missed the entire 2020 season due to the COVID pandemic, and he was one of the few players who appeared to improve more during that off-season than he could have by simply playing another year of minor league baseball. When the epidemic began, he was a low-bonus, average-sized infielder with only 186 plate appearances in the Dominican Summer League, where he had hit a single home run in 43 games and been thrown out stealing more than he had been successful. By the end of his first full pro season in 2021, he’d hit 6’6″ and cracked Top 100 lists he’d never leave, and his trajectory to the big leagues was merely It’s a matter of when, not if. Statcast and Baseball Savant were not designed for Elly, but you might argue that they were created specifically for Elly. Tracking measurables like foot speed, arm strength, and exit velocity – the three most powerful tools any position player can have – allows the casual observer to quickly determine who is the fastest, who throws the hardest, and who knocks the stitches out of the ball better than anyone else on the planet. As De La Cruz rounded into form during the 2024 regular season—his first complete season in the big leagues at the age of 22—his fame rose. 
You can legitimately argue that sprint speed is nothing if you don’t know how to run the bases, that exit velocity is only a fun tool if the balls don’t fly over the fence, and that arm strength is meaningless if the throws to first base go wide. Baseball has never been, and will never be, a game in which world-class sprinters and the strongest players rely solely on natural talent. However, this is when Elly De La Cruz’s budding mythology begins to take shape.
Elly did not only rank as one of the three quickest baserunners by sprint speed during the 2024 season, but topped all of Major League Baseball with 67 steals (and his 102 aggregate steals since the start of the The 2024 season is likewise ranked first. His 119.2 mph maximum exit velocity during his debut call-up in the 2023 season rated in the top 1% of all players in the league, and his 71 extra-base hits in 2024 tied him for 11th place with Yordan Alvarez and Anthony Santander. And, while his 29 errors were both obvious and the most of any player in the game in 2024, his 15 Outs Above Average indicate that his range and arm were tasked with making plays that would have been base hits past his contemporaries entirely.
There are areas of his game that require improvement, as is the case with any 22-year-old getting their feet wet at the highest level. He struck out 219 times in 696 PA last year, the most of any player in the game, and that, combined with his high mistake total, enraged many fans. That FanGraphs still ranks him as the 9th most important player in the game in 2024 with 6.4 fWAR simply adds to the hype surrounding him, as he was deemed impressive despite shortcomings that, in theory, will begin to be addressed with additional time and experience.
We didn’t just see peak Elly, but the tip of the iceberg.
Elly became the first 20-60 shortstop in MLB history in 2024, finishing with 25 home runs and 67 steals. With that as a baseline, soaring to a 30-70, or even 40-80 season does not appear out of reach for Cincinnati’s present and future shortstop, finally providing Reds fans with something tangible to dream about as they approach the 30th anniversary of their last postseason series victory.
Elly De La Cruz with his one-of-a-kind combination of power, speed, and defense can lift the Reds out of their slump and back into the spotlight. If it wasn’t already, the baseball world has been formally put on notice.
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