Players · C · SS · 2026 regular season

Elly De La Cruz

Cincinnati Reds National League CentralSS

Age: 24
B/T: S/R
Height: 6' 6"
Weight: 200 lb
Number: #44

Born: January 11, 2002 in Sabana Grande de Boya, Dominican Republic
MLB debut: June 6, 2023

Compare with…vs Pete Crow-Armstrong vs Sal Stewart vs Jackson Chourio

dbWAR: 19.5
PA: 636
AVG: .283
OBP: .365
SLG: .515
wRC+: 148

Elly De La Cruz is a shortstop for the Cincinnati Reds. In 2026 he hit 30 home runs and knocked in 79 RBIs, notching 158 hits across 636 plate appearances in 143 games. His batting average was .283, 15.8% higher than the league average of .244. He reached base at a .365 clip and slugged .515, for an OPS of .880, 22.4% higher than the league mark of .719 — the best on his team, and 13th of 465 among MLB batters with 100+ plate appearances. He averaged 94.7 mph off the bat, hit 54.9% of balls in play at 95 mph or better, barrelled 14.5% of them and made contact on 71.9% of his swings. Adjusted for his ballpark and league, his 148 wRC+ puts his offence 48% above average. That comes to 6.7 dbWAR — +33.3 runs with the bat, +1.0 for the ballpark, +1.8 on the bases, +0.9 on double plays, +7.5 for the position he plays, against replacement level. It includes no fielding: defensive runs are proprietary and are not estimated here, so the figure credits playing a demanding position but not playing it well.

League context

Percentile among qualified batters, 2026 regular season.

wRC+148

wOBA.382

ISO.233

BB%11.3%

WAR6.7

How the WAR is built

Runs above replacement, 2026. These terms sum to +64.3 runs, divided by runs-per-win to give WAR. There is no fielding term.

BattingBallparkBaserunningDouble playsPositionReplacement

WAR by season

Batting Regular season

Standard and advanced, by season. Regular-season games only — postseason games are listed separately below.


2026	CIN	143	636	158	30	79	30	72	175	.283	.365	.515	.233	.359	11.3%	27.5%	.382	+33.3	148	6.7
2025	CIN	162	699	166	22	86	37	67	181	.264	.336	.440	.176	.337	9.6%	25.9%	.334	+11.0	113	4.8
2024	CIN	160	696	160	25	76	67	69	218	.259	.339	.471	.212	.359	9.9%	31.3%	.351	+22.2	122	6.2
2023	CIN	98	427	91	13	44	35	35	144	.235	.300	.410	.175	.336	8.2%	33.7%	.307	-4.8	91	1.8

Separate from the regular season

Postseason Postseason

Wild Card through World Series. These games are counted on their own: none of them are in the regular-season tables, career totals, league context, leaderboards or dbWAR on this page.

Postseason batting

Postseason Elly De La Cruz's postseason batting, by October and round. Not part of any regular-season figure on this page.
Season	Team	Round	G	PA	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	BB	SO	SB	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS
2025 Post	CIN	Wild Card	2	8	6	1	0	0	0	0	2	2	4	0	.000	.250	.000	.250

Box-score and rate statistics only. wOBA, wRC+, FIP and dbWAR are measured against a full league season, and a postseason is a few teams playing each other for a month, so they are not computed for October.

Platoon splits

How he hits left- and right-handed pitching.

Season

Batting by the hand the pitcher throws with, 2026. Counted from play-by-play, so totals can differ from the box-score season line by a plate appearance or two.
Split	PA	AB	H	HR	BB	SO	AVG	OBP	SLG	wOBA	K%
vs LHP	188	166	54	10	19	52	.325	.394	.596	.421	27.7%
vs RHP	448	393	104	20	53	123	.265	.353	.481	.366	27.5%

Spray chart

Where every ball he put in play landed, 2026.

Loading 387 batted balls…

Contact quality

How hard and at what angle he hits it, over 379 tracked batted balls in 2026. Percentiles are against qualified batters.

Barrel rate: 14.5%
Exit velocity: 94.7
Max exit velo: 117.4
Hard hit: 54.9%
Sweet spot: 38.7%
Launch angle: 9.9°

Barrel rate14.5%

Exit velocity94.7 mph

Hard hit rate54.9%

Contact rate71.9%

A barrel is a batted ball whose exit velocity and launch angle have historically produced at least a .500 average and 1.500 slugging — 98 mph within 26–30°, widening to 8–50° by 116 mph. Reconstructed from Statcast's published anchor points, which reproduces them exactly; the interior is within a degree. Sweet spot (8–32°) is an exact definition.

Hot and cold zones

Batting average by pitch location, 2026.

Below averageLeague averageAbove average

Batting average by location of the pitch that ended each plate appearance, catcher's view. The bordered square is the strike zone; the outer band is chase territory. Cells with fewer than 8 at-bats are left grey rather than shown as signal. League average on the same attribution is .243.

Situational hitting

How Elly De La Cruz hits by base state, outs, score and late-game pressure — each read against his own season line.

Split by

By who is on base when he comes up. The season line is repeated as the baseline.
Situation	PA	AB	H	HR	RBI	BB	SO	AVG	OBP	SLG	wOBA
All situations	636	—	—	—	—	—	—	.283	.365	.515	.382
Bases empty	394	354	105	20	21	40	114	.297	.368	.559	.400
Runner on first	129	114	30	5	16	15	39	.263	.349	.430	.347
Runners on	242	205	53	10	58	32	61	.259	.360	.439	.353
RISP	113	91	23	5	42	17	22	.253	.372	.451	.360

Runners on includes runners in scoring position, which is the convention every reference uses. Counted from play-by-play, 2026.

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Similar players

Nearest 2026 seasons by discipline, contact, power and speed, on rate statistics rather than totals.

Randy ArozarenaSEA

wRC+: 149
HR: 26
AVG: .281
WAR: 5.3

Comparable

Jackson ChourioMIL

wRC+: 130
HR: 25
AVG: .291
WAR: 3.9

Comparable

Endy RodríguezPIT

wRC+: 132
HR: 7
AVG: .267
WAR: 1.4

Comparable

Shohei OhtaniLAD

wRC+: 143
HR: 30
AVG: .275
WAR: 3.8

Comparable

How these are computed

wOBA uses linear weights measured from this season's own play-by-play rather than published constants, and wRC+ is park-adjusted against that same league. dbWAR is our own open implementation — not fWAR or bWAR — and the full derivation, including its simplifications, is on the methodology page.