The two sides to Elly De La Cruz and how to make sense of them.
Reds star has 203-point SLG% advantage from left side.
As it turns out, there isn’t just one Elly De La Cruz. There are two.
As exciting as that must sound for Cincinnati fans – imagine adding another superstar Elly to an otherwise struggling lineup! – we’re not magically introducing another player to the Reds roster. Instead, let’s introduce you to Lefty De La Cruz and Righty De La Cruz. They’re extremely different.
Lefty De La Cruz – LDLC, if you’ll indulge us – is powerful, and patient, as befits a player with a career .493 slugging percentage and an .826 OPS. He has, to date, an outstanding 54% hard-hit rate, which would be a top-10 mark this year – similar to Bobby Witt Jr. He mashed in the Minors, too, posting a 1.012 OPS in his last full Minor League season in 2022.
Righty De La Cruz – RDLC – is a very different player. In his Major League career to date he’s hit just .209/.282/.294, for an OPS of merely .576. Going back to that 2022 Minor League season, it was the same. A .762 OPS might sound OK, but it was also 250 points lower than he had as a lefty batter. RDLC’s hard-hit rate of 30% is below average, somewhere around 230th with Elias Díaz and Brett Baty.
To simplify it by Statcast career run value: LDLC is +15, and RDLC is -7.
Elly De La Cruz hits two jaw-dropping home runs
Apr 8, 2024 · 1:10
Elly De La Cruz hits two jaw-dropping home runs
So far, we’ve hardly broken new ground. Platoon splits have been accessible for practically forever. But rather than just look at the outcomes of the two different Ellys De La Cruz, we can take a different look at how he’s getting there, with the newest in Statcast’s bat-tracking metrics. Why do LDLC and RDLC seem like two different hitters? Because they are.
Consider the most basic bat-tracking metric: bat speed. What does LDLC do? He swings hard – his average bat speed of 76 mph would place him just outside the top 10 hardest swingers, right in between Juan Soto and Yordan Alvarez, and his fast-swing rate (that’s swings above 75 mph) of 62% would rank 10th as well.
RDLC, meanwhile, swings a lot more softly; while 73 mph is still above-average, it’s considerably slower than his lefty counterpart; it would rate somewhere around Mickey Moniak and Jack Suwinski on the bat speed leaderboard. That fast-swing rate drops by half, to just 36%.
You can see in this overlay, which shows that LDLC (blue) is consistently in that 75-80 mph range, and remember, anything over 75 mph is that “fast swing.” But RDLC (orange) is a little more all over the place – sure, he can get up to the 80s when he needs to, but there are more fits and starts. The swings are less consistent, and far slower.
