The switch-hitting Elly De La Cruz has said in the past that he is a natural right-handed hitter. In his fourth Major League season, he is finally looking like one.
Off the bat, we are writing about De La Cruz because he is healthy again, and that is what matters most. The two-time All-Star returned to the Reds lineup on Tuesday, just a little over three weeks after straining his right hamstring. Cincinnati's lineup looks far more complete with De La Cruz hitting second, and the Reds will need him to hit the ground running as they try to stay afloat in the NL Wild Card race.
Before landing on the IL, De La Cruz was having a strong season, with 12 home runs and a 131 wRC+ -- essentially, production 31% better than league average. What's most interesting, though, is how he accumulated that production, because De La Cruz did something that he hadn't really done before: He thrived as a right-handed hitter.
In a three-year span from 2023-25, De La Cruz posted a .606 OPS as a right-handed batter. That ranked T-217th with Detroit's Javier Báez among 225 qualified right-handed hitters. Compare that to the .848 OPS that De La Cruz ran from the left-hand side -- 12th highest in MLB, slightly better than the likes of Gunnar Henderson and Corbin Carroll.
The split was so stark -- and so wonky -- that when MLB.com's Mike Petriello wrote about it in 2024, he coined Righty De La Cruz and Lefty De La Cruz as two different hitters.
They are still two different hitters. But they are both productive now.
Here's another way to look at it. (All stats are through play on Tuesday.)
Lefty De La Cruz (LDLC)
- 2023-25: +41 run value // 50.0% hard-hit rate
- 2026: +4 run value // 52.3% hard-hit rate
Righty De La Cruz (RDLC)
- 2023-25: -25 run value // 34.1% hard-hit rate
- 2026: +8 run value // 59.1% hard-hit rate
As a left-handed hitter, De La Cruz is doing what he normally does. But as a right-handed hitter, the difference is drastic. He's nearly doubled his slugging percentage against lefties in a one-year span, jumping from .342 in 2025 to .642 in 2026. So, what's behind that?
Well, a lot of this is about the quality of contact that De La Cruz is making as a right-handed hitter.
RDLC -- again, that's righty De La Cruz -- has a squared-up rate of 40.0% this season, compared to just 31.9% last year. In fancy terms, a batter squares up a baseball when they attain at least 80% of the possible exit velocity available on a given swing, given the speed of the swing and, to a lesser extent, the speed of the pitch. For our sake, though, what that means is RDLC is connecting bat and ball on the fat part of the bat far more often. He is making flush contact. We can factor in bat speed, too, and that's what blasts are for. Sure enough, RDLC has a far higher rate of blasts per contact this season than last. That's extremely valuable.
So, he's hitting the ball harder and making flusher contact. On top of that, RDLC is driving the ball in the air to all fields. For the first time in his career, De La Cruz's ground ball rate as a right-handed hitter is below 50%, and it's well below that threshold, at 45.7%.
RDLC has stopped pulling the ball on the ground, too. In his career, RDLC is hitting just .149 with a .198 SLG on pulled ground balls; they offer virtually no value. Last season, he pulled the ball on the ground over 27% of the time, more than all but four qualified right-handed hitters. This year, his pulled ground ball rate is down to 15.2%. If he had enough batted balls to qualify, that would be one of the 15 lowest rates in baseball, among right-handed hitters.
Some stuff hasn't changed here. The shape of De La Cruz's right-handed swing is mostly the same. He's still catching the ball well out in front of his center of mass. He's not swinging the bat any faster (though his fast-swing rate is up a tick, which points to him getting his A-swing off more often). While RDLC has closed off his stance, that shift actually began in the middle of last season. These are the sort of under-the-hood changes we often look for when there's a larger transformation like this happening.
At surface level, though, a lot has changed. De La Cruz is making better contact -- squaring the ball up and driving it to all fields -- and it's turned RDLC into a legitimate force. That's the version of De La Cruz that the Reds are getting back as they search for a spark.