If you stuck it out with the Cincinnati Reds until the end of the season then today’s announcement doesn’t come as a big surprise to you. Elly De La Cruz was named the National League’s Player of the Month for September.
The Reds 24-year-old shortstop was having a strong year entering the month, but in September he went nuclear on the league. De La Cruz hit for a season best .348 average during the month. He walked 14 times – his third month in a row with at least 14 walks – giving him a season best .437 on-base percentage. And he hit nine home runs to go along with six doubles to help him to a season best .719 slugging percentage. All told, his 1.156 OPS was hit third month of the season with an OPS over .900 and hit only one over 1.000.
The hot run that he went on in the final month of the season pushed him to the first 30 home run and 30 steal season for Cincinnati since Brandon Phillips accomplished the feat in 2007. He became just the 8th shortstop to get there in the history of Major League Baseball and along with former Red shortstop and Hall of Famer Barry Larkin made the franchise the only one in history with two shortstops to reach 30-30 status.
Overall on the year Elly De La Cruz hit .283/.365/.515. All three categories led the Reds. He also stole 30 bases, which led the Reds. His 30 home runs were second on the team to Sal Stewart’s 32. His 6.5 WAR (Fangraphs version) was 2nd most in the National League and 4th in baseball, trailing just Pete Crow-Armstrong, Bobby Witt Jr., and Yordan Alvarez.
The season got him, along with teammates Chase Burns and Sal Stewart nominated for MLB’s All-MLB team. The teams are voted on by both fans and an undisclosed “panel of experts”. Each group’s vote counts as 50%. You can submit your votes here if you’d like to.
Chase Burns had a heck of a first full season in MLB. After debuting in the summer of 2025, Burns was with Cincinnati from the start of the year until he landed on the injured list in the final week of the season. He went 15-3 in his 29 starts and threw 154.1 innings with 56 walks and 185 strikeouts to go along with a 2.86 ERA. Burns was an All-Star for the first time and will likely get some down ballot Cy Young votes.
Sal Stewart may very well be the National League’s Rookie of the Year. He slumped in September, having the worst month of the season by far, but overall he still put up some strong numbers in 2026. Like Burns, he was an All-Star for the first time and made his debut last year (he played in 18 games in 2025). Stewart was an iron man in 2026 as he played all 162 games for Cincinnati and hit .263/.330/.457 with 25 doubles, 32 home runs, and 111 RBI.
PLEASE, build a team around this man!!
Chances are Elly gets FA contract more than $500 M and approaching $1 B in 2029. Highly unlikely from the Reds.
One could say he finally turned into a “Superstar” in September.
Well, Deserved. Congratulations
Anyone other than EDLC for player of the month would have been a miscarriage of justice. But I suspect the only reason that EDLC will never be the Reds’ version of Mike Trout is that Elly won’t sign a long term extension and will sign with a winning teams later in the decade.
An incredible effort all month. Congrats!
Congrats to Elly. Particularly impressive this year was his improvement against lefties. Tremendous talent and a good work ethic is a formidable combination.
Elly has always hit the ball hard. A few of us asked for just a little more launch angle.
I don’t know if it was a tweak in approach, or just coincidence during September.
FWIW – A small bit of evidence for my hypothesis
Fly ball % by year for Elly
2023 18.3%
2024 24.5%
2025 20.9%
2026 26.4%
Also there’s this…
Hard Hit % by year
2023 46.1%
2024 45.8%
2025 44.3%
2026 54.9%!!!!
But…But…but…the Reds were only 68-75 in games he played…but…but…but since I know the difference between correlation and causation…I belay the silly comment about the team’s record.
Don’t do this. There is no need to try and bait someone. Act like an adult.
The Reds record, such as it was for 2026, was largely due to their poor pitching. You can (and many do) complain about their offense, and the numbers show it was not good.
But teams with weak offensive numbers can still win, if they have good pitching.
They did not score enough runs in 2026, but also gave up way too many runs. Sure there were some blowout games and lopsided scores, but they lost games because of pitching….last Friday night, Francona left Mey in for another inning, and lost the game, gave up 4 runs.
So the whole “who played” and the correlation to “who played” and did the Reds win, is pretty much moot. More likely, who pitched and now may runs did the Reds give up.
I’ll give you correlation. The Reds won a lot of the games that Chase Burns started, and yes, he never came to bat. Pitching.
In terms of WAR, the Reds offense was similar overall in 2026 compared to 2025.
The Reds pitching was much worse in 2026 than in 2025. WAR was 17 less and ERA+ was 25 points lower.
This isn’t really true about the Reds offense, though. In 2025 the Position Player WAR was 50% higher than it was in 2026 (15.3 to 10.4). But also, that number is including defensive value. When looking solely at the “offense” component of Fangraphs version of WAR, the 2025 team was at -29.9 and the 2026 team was at -66.5. The 2025 team hit better and ran the bases better. By a solid amount in each aspect.
https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/CIN/2024.shtml Reds P in 2024 were much better overall than Reds hitters that year.
P had 24 WAR. Reds offense and defense had under 5 WAR.
Reds were 77-85 in 2024.
https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/NYM/1973.shtml Exhibit A. Mets position players had 88 OPS+. Mets pitchers had 111 ERA+ that year. Mets P had an advantage in short series.
Despite such a forgettable season overall it was an incredible season for Elly, Sal and Chase Burns. It was a pleasure watching them this season.
Yes.
And going forward, on the one hand we have 3 solid players to build around. And if we could just get 2025 versions of Lodolo and Abbott back, that would be 5. Add in 3 more above average players and you have a nice core. There is reason for optimism. But then, this would be threading the needle on things going right, again.
That’s life as a Reds fan………
Seems we have decent power. So one who is on base for when we hit homers. Kwan in his walk year? I hope they go three years for Jeffers . See if Lowe would want to come back. There is no way I want to see Tyler or Singer get a QO. We need to add a couple of starting pitchers a couple of guys to push Lower Williamson Petty. They do as well adding to the pen as they did last off season I’ll be happy. I thought we missed out not getting O’Hearn last season. Phillies secondbaseman wasn’t all that expensive when the giants signed him. They gotta get Tito a couple of sticks. With a good offseason I can see us watching Reds baseball next year
I’m not big on understanding analytics. I think I understand OPS+ and ERA+ a little bit.
2026 Reds OPS+ 93 666 R scored ERA+ 87 826 R allowed (-160 R)
bad offense, worse pitching
2025 Reds OPS+ 95 716 R scored ERA+ 113 681 R allowed (+35 R)
meh offense, better pitching
2024 Reds OPS+ 88 699 R scored ERA+ 108 694 R allowed (+5 R)
meh- offense, decent pitching
and Elly did that mainly against the brutal schedule of mainly playoff teams this month.
Good point.
Well earned by Elly. Need to ride him as long as we can (I still fear our fearless ownership won’t pony up even enough ARB $$ to keep him).