Evaluating Elly De La Cruz

Checking in on a generational prospect's time in the majors

One of my favorite pieces I’ve written this year was “Projecting the First Two Rounds of 2024 Fantasy Baseball Drafts.” In it I pitched the case for Corbin Carroll as a Round 1/2 pick in ‘24. By this logic, he made sense as a priority 2023 target — in order for him to have such an aggressive ADP next spring, he’d need to do something special enough to warrant it.

It’s already clear I was too low on Carroll, who will absolutely be a first-rounder in fantasy roto leagues come 2024. Joining him in Round 1 will be another rookie, one I wasn’t even sure would debut this year. His name is Elly De La Cruz. You’ve probably heard of him.

24 hours before Underdog’s 2nd half best ball contest closed, here was Elly’s ADP:

I was blown away by the market’s thirst for Elly when he was going in Round 4 back in June, so surely it’s taken me a bit to wrap my head around him going ahead of J-Ram, Tucker, Vlad, etc.

In my dynasty rankings update from June 30th, which can be found on Patreon, I put Elly at 28th overall. Here are the position players he’s around:

I just want to see a little more from him before placing him ahead of Riley/Seager/Machado.

In case you hadn’t seen Machado has 8 HR in 12 July games. Seager, meanwhile, has an absurd 184 wRC+ in a career year. Yes, I’m preemptively defending this rank.

Anyways, this is a long-winded way of saying that the hype for Elly is palpable. Bobby Witt Jr. was being taken in the first round of NFBC drafts last offseason, and that caused plenty of uproar/discussions/arguments. Elly hype will be another beast entirely, and the upside is obvious — a .300 bat with 40/40 potential.

But it’s important to have a value base to stay anchored to. I like using THE BAT X projections and then mentally adjusting for upside cases like Elly and other younger players (where there’s more volatility in projections).

Even then, you might argue that projections can’t account for everything Elly is capable of. They “missed” on Carroll this year, which is why we need to account for upside ourselves.

But there’s still a required rate of return on any investment — the higher the risk, the higher the expected return. From this lens, Elly makes sense as a Round 1 play. I won’t fault anyone for making that bet this offseason as he’s one of the only players in the league capable of a league-bending fantasy campaign.

And yet it’s still important to understand who Elly is right now — his strengths, flaws, opportunities, and environment. Let’s dive into his profile.

Plate Discipline

My number one starting point when trying to learn more about a young hitter is to look at their plate discipline. Elly enters Monday with a 5.4 BB% and a 29.9 K%. Not super ideal, but also to be expected. THE BAT X projects his rest-of-season output to come with a 5.9 BB% and a 31.8 K%.

The walk rate is down considerably from the 14% mark he posted in Triple-A this year, but that always felt like an outlier. By the end of his time in the minors opposing pitchers were legit afraid to come into the zone against him.

Digging deeper under the hood, Elly’s chase rate comes in at 39.1%, which would be a top-20 (aggressive) mark among qualified bats. His 12.6% swinging strike rate is much closer to league average.

What this tells me is that Elly will expand the zone some, but (at least so far) it isn’t being accompanied by a terrible whiff rate.

Interestingly, as shown above, he’s actually striking out less lately despite chasing more. There’s a caveat that he’s swinging more in general now, though.

Knowing his history, I’d expect to see more peaks and valleys in his swing decisions and overall plate discipline throughout his first few years in the majors. The most exciting part of this check-in has been confirmation that he isn’t being overmatched. That wasn’t a given when he was initially called up.

Batted Ball Metrics

Now that we’ve learned a little about Elly’s process, let’s check in on what happens once he makes contact and….LOL.

Thanks to the introduction of Triple-A Statcast data this year, we knew De La Cruz had elite batted ball upside back on May 9th:

That was all in a single game. Just 7 MLB players have hit a ball over 116.6 mph all season. None have hit a ball harder than 118.8 mph.

Elly’s ability to do serious, serious damage upon making contact is already some of the best in the world, but he isn’t doing a great job of taking advantage of that power.

He enters Monday with a 57.9 GB%, which would rank 2nd among qualified hitters, behind only Tim Anderson. Likewise, his 15.8% fly ball rate is only behind TA.

This is the most disappointing part of his profile thus far, but it’s hardly a death sentence. Young hitters are constantly working on improving the “loft” in their swings, and it isn’t uncommon for grounder rates to improve with age (Elly is just 21 remember).

Still, if there’s an area of his game for Elly to work on immediately, it’s lifting more.

Environmental Factors, Luck, and Speed

The reason Elly needs to get the ball in the air more (in addition to it simply being the optimal way to hit nowadays) is because he plays in the best ballpark for hitting homers in the majors.

This was always one of the bull cases for Elly as a fantasy prospect - Cincinnati’s Great American Ballpark (GABP) has the 3rd highest park factor overall, and it’s really more of a 3-stadium tier alongside Coors Field and Fenway Park.

But Coors and Fenway are mostly huge for batting average. GABP is straight up tiny. Elly will hit a lot of “cheap” homers here throughout this career, especially once he stops making contact on the ground so much.

This also plays into the “luck” factor — De La Cruz currently has a 26.7 HR/FB%. On the one hand, he’s lucky to have 4 homers considering how few fly balls he’s hit. On the other hand, he’ll probably always run high HR-FB rates while playing in Cincinnati.

And then there’s his BABIP, currently sitting at .407. Normally I’d say that’s going to regress significantly, but Elly is quite literally the fastest player in MLB. And there are no more defensive shifts. He’ll run a higher BABIP than most. The question is by how much?

Lastly, De La Cruz is 16-for-18 in stolen base attempts. He didn’t debut until June 6th, but he’s already tied for the 21st most steals in the major this season. While many will view Elly as “risky” due to his plate discipline, the stolen bases actually provide an enormous floor for his fantasy value.

Final Thoughts

The most important takeaway, as previously noted, is that Elly hasn’t been overmatched despite all the strikeout concerns from the minors. He’s a major league player, and everything from now on will be about slowly getting better in a variety of areas.

The biggest leap could be made from getting the ball off the ground more in order to take advantage of GABP. This goes hand-in-hand with Elly’s chase rate. I don’t view Elly’s swing as one that beats the ball into the ground. He can lift the ball just fine. Instead, it has more to do with pitch selection, which comes back to his chase rate.

When you swing at a bad pitch outside the zone, there isn’t as much you can do with it. Elly might be a generational “bad ball” hitter, but we’d still prefer him to maximize his chances at an elite batted ball outcome by swinging at the right pitches.

And while his chase rate might always be above average, the good news is Elly’s GB% is so absurd at the moment that even marginal improvements will make a big difference.

Add in his elite speed, willingness to run, and plus-plus park factors, and it’s easy to see the ultimate upside case for Elly in 2023 and beyond.