Elly De La Cruz pushed his 2026 run a notch higher Tuesday when he collected his first triple of the season and drew a walk that lifted his wRC+ to 147, FanGraphs reported.
The numbers behind that moment are notable: through 50 games De La Cruz was hitting.290/.356/.525 with an.881 OPS, 11 home runs and nine stolen bases on 13 attempts, and FanGraphs credited him with 2.6 WAR. FanGraphs also said he was on pace for 30 steals, 38 home runs and 8.9 WAR — a home-run total that would top his 2024 high of 25 — and called him "one-third of the way to an all-time season in Cincinnati." BaseballHQ.com, meanwhile, put the spotlight on him as an electric shortstop who "is showing signs of turning into a true five-category bat."
That promise sits beside a clear recent arc. De La Cruz signed with the Cincinnati Reds as an international prospect in 2018 and debuted in June 2023. He exploded in 2024 with an MLB-best 67 stolen bases, 25 home runs and 6.6 WAR. But the second half of 2025 brought a quad issue that coincided with a steep drop in production: he had 18 homers, a.495 slugging percentage and an.854 OPS at the 2025 All-Star Game, then managed just four homers, a.363 slugging percentage and a.666 OPS in the final 65 games, Red Reporter noted.
The tension now is what this season actually means. Red Reporter said the De La Cruz seen so far in 2026 "sure looks like he’s not dealing with any quad issues anymore," and his raw counting stats and power spike argue that he’s returning to peak form. Yet the underlying speed profile gives pause: Red Reporter recorded De La Cruz’s sprint speed falling to 29.1 feet per second in 2025 and then averaging 28.1 feet per second in 2026, a mark that ranked in the 74th percentile. The same piece pointed out that "despite the spike in on-base percentage, he’s not nearly on the same pace when it comes to stealing bags" — nine steals on 13 attempts through 50 games — a clear shortfall from his 2024 total.
That gap — elite tools on display in some metrics, diminished results in others — is exactly the question BaseballHQ framed in its feature, asking whether the uptick in production and elevated batting average are sustainable and whether his wheels will ever be elite again. FanGraphs has put a stake in the ground about impact: if these rates hold, the projection is a season that would rank among Cincinnati’s best. But projections are fragile when they rest on recovery from injury and a reconfiguration of a player’s game.
The most consequential question for the Reds and for De La Cruz himself is therefore simple and sharp: can he keep driving the ball and sustaining a near-five-category offensive profile while reassembling the elite base-stealing that made him a different kind of threat? If he can, the numbers suggest he will be in MVP conversations for the National League; if he cannot, this 2026 surge could prove to be a powerful but partial correction to a volatile two-year stretch.
Will elly de la cruz convert the current blend of power and on-base skill into a full-season, five-category breakout — and will his legs, the element that turned him into an elite leadoff weapon in 2024, return to that same level? The answer will define whether this is a career pivot or a temporary peak.
