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When Elly De La Cruz first broke in with the Cincinnati Reds in 2023, his 30.1 feet per second sprint speed ranked in the 100th percentile. At just 21 years of age, he swiped 35 bags in just 98 games – a rate of almost 58 per 162 games played – and he backed that up with and MLB-best
67 steals in his first full season in 2024.
The 2025 season, though, was different for this burgeoning superstar. The managerial seat was handed over to Terry Francona from David Bell, who had helmed it for Elly’s first two seasons in the big leagues. Then, a quad strain sapped Elly’s speed down to just 29.1 feet per second – only good for the 91st percentile after he’d checked in at 30.0 (100th percentile) in 2024 – and he checked in with just 37 total stolen bases.
The surface question here is this – will Elly once again steal more than 50 bases in 2026?
There are a ton of moving parts here beyond just the quad, even though that’s a big variable. He stole 25 bases during the season’s first ‘half’ in 2025 (97 G) only to back it up with just 12 over the final 65 G, so there was clearly a slowdown of his rate. That also coincided with a precipitous decline in OBP (.367 to just .306), and the hope all around is that a healthy Elly is more the former than the latter.
Still, Francona is both a bit more cautious in letting his players run wild on the bases than was Bell and also more committed to hitting Elly 3rd in the lineup each and every day. In both 2023 and 2024, Elly hit higher in the order more often, leading off some 21 times in his first taste of the bigs and settling in as the regular #2 hole hitter in 2024. So, there’s the chance that despite his elite speed, Elly gets asked to do more with his bat than his legs going forward even though we know he’s fully capable of both.
For instance, future Hall of Famer Jose Ramirez was the offensive battleship in Francona’s lineups during their time together in Cleveland, though Ramirez became depended up on to bat 3rd most days and only swiped more than 30 bags once while playing under Francona. In the last two seasons in a different system, though, he’s swiped 41 and 44 bags respectively.
Elly, still just 24 years old, has established himself as an All Star caliber player for the Reds already. That much is obvious. But one of his most elite traits that has hit set up to be potentially an all-time great is speed that is rarely possessed by anyone, let alone a guy who also has the power to pop 40-50 homers in a season, and reining him in at this still young age does seem like a bit too much. If you put on the cynical lens that he’s didn’t agree to a long-term deal to make him Cincinnati’s for his whole career, there’s also the argument that right now is the time to try to get the most out of him as possible and win as many games as you can, and letting him add value in the form of swiping bags firmly qualifies as that.
So, what say you? Will Elly again top 50 steals and establish himself as one of the elite baserunners of this era? Or has that already become merely a secondary part to his game?
