Cincinnati Reds SS Elly De La Cruz is one of the newest stars to enter MLB fame, but where did he play before joining the MLB team? Did he play college baseball? Let’s explore the switch-hitting shortstop’s rise to stardom.
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Elly De La Cruz’s Rise to Baseball Stardom
No, Elly De La Cruz did not play college baseball, but he did spend several years in Minor League Baseball, proving his skills.
The Cincinnati Reds superstar has slowly built up his profile before exploding in 2024. De La Cruz led the league with 67 stolen bases, remarkable for the 6″5 athlete as one of the fastest players in MLB.
This season has been a solid start for this year’s current cover star of MLB The Show, and there is plenty more to come from the 23-year-old.
De La Cruz grew up in the Dominican Republic alongside his eight older siblings. He signed as an international free agent with the Reds in 2018. He received a $65,000 signing bonus and made his professional debut in 2019 in the Dominican Summer League for the Reds.
After not playing a game in 2020, he started at the rookie level with the Arizona Complex League Reds, where he hit three home runs and 13 RBIs in just 11 games. That saw him swiftly promoted to single-A with the Daytona Tortugas. He would play 50 games with them, hitting five home runs, stealing eight bases, and solid splits of .269/.305/.477 with an OPS of .782.
That impressive 2021 season saw him promoted yet again to high-A baseball. De La Cruz ramped it up with 20 home runs, 28 stolen bases, and really good batting splits of .302/.359/.609 in 73 games.
He would spend the latter part of the 2022 season at double-A with the Chattanooga Lookouts. Again, he went from strength to strength, hitting eight home runs and stealing 19 bases, earning himself a spot at the All-Star Futures Game as the Reds representative.
That saw him also named the Reds’ Minor League Player of the Year and added to their 40-man roster to protect him from the Rule 5 draft.
2023 was where he really started to break out. Having been optioned to triple-A, he only spent 38 games with the Louisville Bats and was promoted to the major leagues in June 2023 following an injury to Nick Senzel. At the time, De La Cruz became the fifth-youngest National League player in MLB history.
He went on to play in 98 games of his rookie season, hitting 13 home runs and excelling with his 35 stolen bases. His splits were not spectacular at .235/.300/.410, but his base running ability was just too threatening and too exciting for the Reds to leave him out.
Those flashes of ability started to put the league on notice, and in 2024, he really broke out, hitting 25 home runs and, as previously mentioned, leading the league with stolen bases.
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His batting splits improved to a solid .259/.339/.471 with a good OPS of .810. Rightfully so, he was named as an All-Star reserve and continued to excel after the break.
The 2025 season is still young, but in his 11 games so far, he has hit two home runs, 10 RBIs, and two steals.
His problem is that everyone knows how dangerous he is at stealing bases, so he is doing everything to prevent it. Jose Reyes holds the 21st-century record for most stolen bases, with 78 in 2007. Elly could easily beat that, but teams will do their best to stop him.
Cincinnati has high hopes for this season, with De La Cruz and Hunter Greene, another young star leading their rotation, leading the way. Their 4-7 start is not what they would have wished for, but there is plenty of baseball still to be played, and the story of Elly De La Cruz is only just beginning.
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