It\u2019s easy to forget, but Elly De La Cruz made 29 starts (and appeared in 32 overall games) as the 3B of the Cincinnati Reds back in his first year in the big leagues in 2023. That was in deference to Matt McLain, current 2B and resident backup SS, who made 52 starts at short that year.<\/p>\n
Though I doubt there\u2019s a realistic scenario that sees Elly ever need to play some 3B on the regular, he\u2019s got the chops and the experience there. That\u2019s some versatility from the planned starting middle-infield, with McLain also having a wealth of outfield experience from his days at UCLA, in Cape Cod League play, and even in the Arizona Fall League, too.<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
To their collective left is a logjam at 1B, it would appear. The way the Reds plan to un-jam those logs is, once again, through versatility. Sal Stewart, a 3B and 2B by trade prior to his 2025 call-up, will presumably rotate through all three positions (as well as DH). The recently signed Eugenio Su\u00e1rez is himself a former shortstop of these very Reds, and while those days are long over, he\u2019s been a 3B at the big league level for a decade and will presumably be fully capable of providing cover there when not at DH or 1B himself.<\/p>\n
Then, there\u2019s Spencer Steer, a Gold Glove finalist at 1B this past season who may well be staring at the starting LF job right now. He\u2019ll play both of those spots often, while there\u2019s word that the former 3B and 2B will get time at 2B, at least, to keep his bat in the lineup. Though putting him at SS for any serious time is a bridge too far, Steer profiles as the most versatile player on the roster \u2013 that is, of course, if the Reds remain committed to keeping former 3B\/SS\/2B Noelvi Marte as their everyday RF, something he only just began to to last August.<\/p>\n
(Even then, it\u2019s easy to see Marte sliding back into the infield mix in a 15 inning game with tons of other switches, or if someone gets injured unexpectedly, and the club wants him to learn more CF, too.)<\/p>\n
There\u2019s been some talk of seeing if TJ Friedl can get some run in LF, as that would allow Dane Myers \u2013 a platoon OF who\u2019ll play all over the OF \u2013 to cover CF and increase the defensive quality of the overall outfield. Catcher Tyler Stephenson has played 1B in 32 games in his career, with 76 additional appearances at DH to keep his bat in the lineup against LHP. Even fringe roster guys like Christian Encarnacion-Strand and Tyler Callihan have positional versatility, with CES experienced at both corners on the infield and Callihan playing just about everywhere but short.<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
That\u2019s a comical level of flexibility, really. If it were truly his goal, manager Terry Francona could go weeks of fielding lineups every single day that a) were actually feasible and b) never played the same player in the same position two days in a row, especially with the likes of Will Benson and JJ Bleday experienced at all three OF spots on top of all the rest.<\/p>\n
Then, though, there\u2019s Ke\u2019Bryan Hayes. Somehow, every time I try to figure out what the Reds are actually up to, it all seems to make sense until we get to Hayes.<\/p>\n
Hayes has over 9100 innings logged as a professional since being a 1st round draft pick of the Pittsburgh Pirates all the way back in 2015, and all but 5.0 of those innings have come as a 3B (with those handful in a trio of late-game appearances at short back in 2022). He\u2019s a 3B, a 3B only, and does so with glovework that may well be the best of any player in the sport despite a bat that\u2019s been one of the worst of any regular for over two seasons running.<\/p>\n
Hayes is the lone position player on the roster outside of backup catcher who plays nowhere else, making him something of a unicorn on a roster that\u2019s otherwise put together specifically to highlight versatility. Hayes is also a unicorn in the sport itself as a glove-first player at a position otherwise populated by big-hitting sluggers, a glove-first player who doesn\u2019t play the defensive positions higher up the pecking order of importance like CF or SS.<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
If you look at how this roster is actually put together, the one glaring thing they don\u2019t seem to have is a classic glove-first guy who can fill in at every single infield position as a late-inning guy, as a utility knife for precisely the right scenarios and alignments. You know the archetypes \u2013 the Jose Oquendos, the Tony Phillips, the Craig Counsells, the Juan Uribes, the Ryan Freels (RIP). In Hayes, they found a guy with two of the most overriding characteristics of classic utility guys \u2013 great glove, no bat \u2013 but didn\u2019t get a guy who, for whatever reason, has never been tasked with taking that elite defense all over the diamond to unlock the rest of his roster.<\/p>\n
So, he\u2019s on a versatile roster as the guy who most profiles as a player who should move around a lot, but doesn\u2019t. Instead of being paid like a guy who\u2019s a utility player, he\u2019s on a long-term deal that guarantees him $36 million and makes him one of the higher-paid guys on the team. Despite all of that, he\u2019s not just a guy that the Reds overpaid for something he\u2019s not and ended up in this situation of mutual volition, he\u2019s the guy the Reds went out and got specifically because this is who he is, and did so despite having a handful of better bats who also look like they should probably play 3B most days.<\/p>\n
Perhaps there\u2019s a renaissance with Hayes\u2019 bat in there somewhere that I don\u2019t see. Perhaps the Reds are, for whatever reason, simply content to get 1.6 dWAR from Hayes at 3B batting 9th most days and nothing more, all while one of Stewart, Suarez, or Steer sits on the pine those days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s easy to forget, but Elly De La Cruz made 29 starts (and appeared in 32 overall games)…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":555061,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2400],"tags":[5,10922,535,50,4259,1951,1177,92,1952,73047,1401,4,542,64,536,1830,6513,6288,1949,8167,1419,1868,7656],"class_list":["post-555060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cincinnati-reds","tag-baseball","tag-christian-encarnacion-strand","tag-cincinnati","tag-cincinnati-reds","tag-cincinnatireds","tag-dane-myers","tag-elly-de-la-cruz","tag-eugenio-suarez","tag-jj-bleday","tag-ke39bryan-hayes","tag-matt-mclain","tag-mlb","tag-noelvi-marte","tag-pittsburgh-pirates","tag-reds","tag-roster","tag-sal-stewart","tag-spencer-steer","tag-the-athletics","tag-tj-friedl","tag-tyler-callihan","tag-tyler-stephenson","tag-will-benson"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116014881649931486","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=555060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555060\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/555061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=555060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=555060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=555060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}