Elly De La Cruz did not look like himself down the stretch of the season, and now we have a better idea of why that was the case.
Cincinnati Reds president of baseball operations Nick Krall appeared this week on “Reds Hot Stove League” and made a concerning revelation about the Reds star shortstop De La Cruz. Krall disclosed that De La Cruz played through a partially torn quad during the second half of the season.
“A lot of people don’t know this, [but] towards the end of July, he was dealing with a partial torn quad,” Krall said of De La Cruz, per WLWT in Cincinnati. “He has been rehabbing [this offseason]. He was at the ballpark today. To his credit, he played every day. He tried to grind through it. He tried to play through it. If you look at his defensive numbers, he made 12 errors towards the end of July when he got hurt and then he made 14 from the end of July on.”
“He wasn’t able to do it [play with injury] as successful as possible,” Krall added. “He had a stretch of games where he hit 19 homers and then he did not hit one until some point in September. That is going to affect him. That is going to affect everything he does. But, to his credit, he was trying to play every single day through it.”
De La Cruz, already a two-time All-Star at 23 years old, managed to appear in all 162 games for the Reds. But he did indeed experience a regression in many of his numbers from his standout rookie season, including home runs (from 25 to 22), OPS (from .809 to .777), and stolen bases (from 67 to a drastic dip of 37).
Considering that the switch-hitting De La Cruz will be the face of the Reds’ franchise for many years to come, many will likely be questioning why Cincinnati allowed De La Cruz to fight through the injury instead of protecting their young star from himself. It is especially so when you consider that De La Cruz’s game is heavily based around speed and power technique at the plate (both of which would obviously suffer from a partial quad tear).
That said, the Reds were able to make the playoffs this season for the first time since 2020 (ultimately losing to the eventual champion Los Angeles Dodgers in the NL Wild Card round). If De La Cruz is indeed progressing well in his rehab this offseason, it won’t be long before we see him producing many more of the spectacular plays that he was making before getting hampered by injury last season.
