GOODYEAR, Ariz. — Cincinnati Reds shortstop Elly De La Cruz doesn’t have a big number that he’s chasing in 2026.
Back in 2024, he set out to steal 80 bases. Last year, he successfully played in all 162 games.
What does he want to do this year?
“I just want to take what the game gives me,” De La Cruz said.
When De La Cruz was in the minor leagues, he was able to out-run some of his mistakes. He’s having to learn how to play a clean, consistent game, and that’s been the big emphasis since the Reds hired Terry Francona. The manager told De La Cruz that he wanted De La Cruz to be the best player on the best team in MLB, and that he wanted De La Cruz’s elite tools to impact winning.
It’s the same message this year to the 24-year-old De La Cruz.
“He’s always going to have to battle the expectations because there’s nothing he can’t do on the field,” Francona said. “What we’re trying to get him to do from Day 1 is be as consistent as he can be and let your tools effect the game to help us win.”
Earlier this week, I took a deep dive into his swing and the leg kick that should make him a more dangerous power hitter in 2025.
The even bigger areas of focus for De La Cruz this spring are his defense and his base running.
In each of the last two seasons, De La Cruz has led the league in errors. There have been whispers about whether or not the Reds could move him to the outfield one day, but Nick Krall said at the very start of the offseason that the Reds were sticking with De La Cruz at shortstop.
He’s still relatively inexperienced. De La Cruz is still growing into the shortstop defender that the Reds think he can be.
“He’s so long-levered,” Francona said. “There are some throws where it’s not as easy as somebody that’s nice and compact. That’s just the reality of it. But he also gets to some balls that nobody else can, either. With health, it’s certainly not going to hurt.”
When the organization took a deep dive into De La Cruz’s defense from the 2025 season, the conclusion was that De La Cruz was pretty solid when he was healthy. The errors and the mistakes started piling up when he was banged up.
De La Cruz was battling a quad strain throughout the second half of the season. He wasn’t running as well, and Francona went on to regret his decision to keep playing De La Cruz every single day. De La Cruz wore down a bit and became more prone to make a mistake in the field.
“If you look before and after he got hurt, it’s night and day from a metric standpoint,” Nick Krall said.
Even when he was slumping, De La Cruz was “the guy” in the Reds’ lineup. Even when he was hurt, he carried all of those expectations with him. His teammates weren’t thinking about the errors. They were just impressed that he was in the lineup every day.
“It’s a testament to his character,” TJ Friedl said. “He never wants to be taken out of the lineup. He loves being out on the field. He loves playing. He loves grinding. It shows who he is as a person, a teammate and a clubhouse guy. It was no surprise to any of us.
Matt McLain said, “He went out there, and he never complained. He was getting it figured out and show up at 6:40 and be ready to go. That was amazing, especially with what he went through.”
Full health and the spring training schedule gives De La Cruz the ability to spend a lot of time working on his defense right now. He’s working daily with bench coach Freddie Benavides, who’s such a highly regarded infield coach that Joey Votto gifted Benavides his Gold Glove in 2011 as a thank you.
“We’re picking up the pace,” Benavides said of his work with De La Cruz. “There’s a sense of urgency. (We’re working on) the internal clock. Knowing when he has to get after the ball. The speed of the runner. The scoreboard. The situation of the game. You start throwing a lot of that stuff at him even in practice and in the speed of his pregame work so it can translate into the game.”
Early in the day, they do a lot of reaction work to train De La Cruz’s hands. A popular drill is De La Cruz getting on both knees and fielding short hops over and over. That’s the drill that helped give De La Cruz’’s former teammate, Santiago Espinal, some of the best hands in baseball.
Last spring, the big focus for De La Cruz was ground balls to his left that he might have to backhand. “He really, really improved on that,” Benavides said.
This spring, he’s working on a few other types of plays.
“The charging play,” Benavides said. “Coming around the ball a bit better in the six hole. It’s about angles. A lot of it isn’t being surprised by the runner. They’ll catch it and he’s close and he has to rush the throw. You try to limit that stuff based on the situation.”
As Benavides discusses De La Cruz’s work this spring, the bench coach offers a specific scenario. How do you approach a charging ground ball when a fast runner like Cody Bellinger is sprinting to first? The answer depends on the situation of the game and if it’s a do-or-die play. Building up that internal clock takes time.
“This is a young kid,” Francona said. “But he has some reps under him now. He’ll be ok. He’ll be fine.”
De La Cruz is also working on making his throws more consistent. That’s improved over the years, and the Reds have found some specific things to work on.
“He has been shorter with his arm and more accurate,” Benavides said. “Being quicker with his feet will put his arm in a better position to throw. He has really improved shortening his arm. But it’s arm strength that nobody has. You let him be and let him use his athleticism.”
In 2025, De La Cruz’s quad injury also really impacted him on the bases. After leading the league with 67 steals in 2024, he only stole 37 bags in 2025. After July 1, he only stole 15 bases.
“It stinks because last year he was hurt, but he still stole 40 bases,” base running coach Collin Cowgill said. “He was stealing even with his quad. It was more of a safer bet for us.”
Cowgill would check in with De La Cruz during games.
“Do you think you can get this pitcher here knowing how you’re feeling?”
“Yeah, I got him.”
“Then, we’d turn him loose,” Cowgill said. “Now, with a fully healthy Elly and the experience behind it — this is what happened when I got thrown out, how do we make this adjustment… If the technique of it gets to where it’s really, really good, he’s going to be a problem.”
Last summer, Francona identified exactly what he wanted De La Cruz to work on as a base runner during spring training. “The last piece for him is when he steals, he doesn’t pick up the ball,” Francona said last August.
On the first day of spring training this year, Francona was asked what he hoped to accomplish with the entire team this spring. Francona spoke about the Reds working more on developing this skill.
“We can do better at knowing where the ball is all the time,” Francona said. “We’re fast, for the most part. I know we weren’t as aggressive last year as before, but we’re still one of the more aggressive teams. When guys are sliding into second and the ball is in the outfield because they don’t know where it is, we’ve got to do better at knowing where the ball is. We’ll work on that a lot.”
The drills can be as simple as working on your first step by reading balls off the bat during batting practice.
“McLain is really good at it,” Francona said. “Some guys weren’t taught that when they were young, so it’s a bit of a challenge. We want to do it the best we can. When you’re running and you don’t know where the ball is, you’re relying on a little bit of luck.”
Taking luck out of the equation is big for De La Cruz. The Reds really want him to run, but they don’t want him to lead the league in outs on the bases like he did in 2024 when he was caught stealing 16 times.
“His jumps have never been great,” Cowgill said. “The technique has never been great. He’s just always really good at knowing when to go. If the technique cleans up, he’s going to be a real issue for people because he’s going to be so much quicker.”
Here’s how Cowgill described the green light that De La Cruz will have this season.
“If your jump is right and your timing is right and you’re off clean, you have the freedom to go any time you want,” Cowgill said. “As soon as you feel like you’re late, he has to have the ability to shut it down. He’s going to be safe if he’s clean. If his jump is good. If his timing is right. If he gets out quickly. It’s very hard to throw Elly out when he’s doing that. Sometimes, when he gets a little ultra-aggressive and is a little late, tries to be a little too creative, that’s when we start to run into issues. As long as he’s right timing wise, we’ll cut him loose as often as he can.”
A part of working on his first step is working on his running form. De La Cruz, Cowgill and strength and conditioning director Rob Fumagalli
“(Fumagalli) and I showed him a ton of videos,” Cowgill said. “We’ve compared his technique to some of the best guys.”
Cleaner running mechanics can help De La Cruz consistently be on the right path from first base to second base, and it can also help him prevent soft tissue injuries in the future. It took a couple of months for De La Cruz to put the quad injury behind him during the offseason. He completed that process, and Krall said that De La Cruz looks even stronger than he was entering last year.
De La Cruz learned a lot from the 2025 season, which ended with his first taste of the playoffs. He’s learning how to win, and he’s looking forward to his next opportunity on the postseason stage.
“It was a great experience,” De La Cruz said. “Something I’ve never been through. It was a great experience. It’s the same baseball, but a different vibe. We’ve got to be ready for it. We’ve got to be prepared from now on to play in the playoffs.”