The calendar officially flipped itself to October first thing this morning, and whichever MLB player establishes themselves as the best player on the planet during this month may well end up with a World Series banner to fly forever in their name.
That wasn’t the case for the month of September, however. The honor for being the best National League player on the planet for that calendar month didn’t even get to ply his trade in the postseason at all.
Cincinnati Reds superstar Elly De La Cruz broke
out in the biggest of ways all month, and for that he earned the honor of being the NL Player of the Month for September, as the Reds relayed this week. Elly socked 9 homers and posted a ridiculous 1.156 OPS for the month, his 2.0 fWAR besting Mookie Betts (1.9) and Fernando Tatis, Jr. (1.7) for the most among all MLB players in that time.
It has often felt as if Elly was still only just scratching the surface of his best. The 24 year finally seemed to reveal a whole additional layer to his excellence during the month of September, and the Reds can only hope they get to see that more often during the two remaining years they’ll have with him on their roster before the vultures circle.
In other news, veteran outfielder TJ Friedl elected free agency at season’s end. His struggles were well documented during the course of the 2026 campaign, and he was both designated for assignment in September and also accepted an outright to AAA Louisville by season’s end. Now, it appears he’ll enter free agency and hope to find a soft landing spot to revive his career, one that as recently as 2025 still showed ample promise as a guy who could get on base and at least patrol a corner OF spot with reasonable aplomb.
How the Reds try to simply replace a guy like that remains to be seen. I’m not sure anyone in the front office would have said at the start of 2026 that a guy like Friedl – with a .360+ OBP in his pocket and two more years of team control – would be out of the organization’s plans with no return for 2027 on the docket. Each of Dane Myers, Blake Dunn, Carlos Jorge, and Noelvi Marte brought their CF gloves to the dugout at times during 2026, and while at least a few of those guys have high ceilings down the road it sure doesn’t look like there’s an ‘everyday regular’ among them. That’s frustrating given that the free agent market for CFs looks particularly barren this winter, meaning the Reds are either going to have to get incredibly creative with another club in trade or simply trust that one of those upside young options can miraculously take a big step as soon as next spring.
Finally, the Reds made the call to part ways with pitching coach Derek Johnson. He’d been on a personal leave of absence since back in June with no real news about where or why being reported, so today will not really be the first day of the team operating without him in charge.
Still, there were some of the highest highs the pitching staff of the Reds have ever experienced during Johnson’s 7-year tenure with the club. The 2025 season, in particular, showcased not just an overall healthy staff with great talent, but a staff that was almost exclusively composed of guys drafted and developed under his tutelage. He also helped channel a deep pipeline from the Vanderbilt baseball program while with the Reds, one that brought in the likes of Sonny Gray and coach Caleb Cotham along the way.
