Elly De La Cruz’s midseason arrival doesn’t mean he’s out of the Rookie of the Year race

Elly De La Cruz is set to arrive in the Cincinnati Reds’ clubhouse any day now and begin what should be a very long career in Major League Baseball.

The 21-year-old shortstop stands 6-foot-5 and 200 pounds. He’s a switch-hitter with 60-grade power and 70-grade running (on a scale of 20-80) and is exactly the type of five-tool athlete scouts dream of finding.

Currently the No. 4 prospect in baseball, per MLB Pipeline, De La Cruz has proven beyond any doubt he’s ready for The Show by slashing .303/.401/.648 with 11 home runs and 11 stolen bases in 34 games with Triple-A Louisville.

That skillset and talent is why De La Cruz was tied for the third-best preseason odds to win National League Rookie of the Year at +1200. Corbin Carroll (+350) was the favorite to win the award. Other preseason contenders quickly fell out of the running as St. Louis slugger Jordan Walker was sent back to Triple-A and Philadelphia’s hard-throwing Andrew Painter sprained his elbow.

Carroll, meanwhile, is off to an incredible start in Arizona. He’s slashing .290/.376/.519 with nine home runs and 16 stolen bases through May and cemented his Rookie of the Year front-runner status in the process. But anyone holding onto a De La Cruz bet shouldn’t throw away those tickets just yet.

As improbable as it seems, it’s not impossible for the Reds’ prospect to get back in the race upon his MLB arrival. There’s actually a bit of recent precedent for a contender to emerge mid-season, too. Let’s dig into how he could do it.

Fangraphs’ Steamer (Update) projections provides a solid idea of what the rest of the season could look like for Carroll — assuming he stays healthy and continues to take his rest days at the same rate. As of June 1, that translates to a slash line of .266/.352/.469 with a wRC+ of 121, 22 home runs, 70 RBI and 33 stolen bases. Good for a 3.7 WAR.

Here’s how that stacks up to the last five NL Rookie of the Year winners. (We’ll omit the 2020 campaign for the purposes of this example as a 60-game season doesn’t translate.)

NL ROY 2017-2019, 2021-2022 Year Name Team PA WAR BA OBP SLG HR RBI SB 2022 Michael Harris II Atlanta Braves 441 5.3 .297 .339 .514 19 64 20 2021 Jonathan India Cincinnati Reds 631 4.1 .269 .376 .459 21 69 12 2019 Pete Alonso New York Mets 693 5.5 .260 .358 .583 53 120 1 2018 Ronald Acuna Jr. Atlanta Braves 487 3.9 .293 .366 .552 26 64 16 2017 Cody Bellinger Los Angeles Dodgers 480 3.9 .267 .352 .581 39 97 10

Carroll’s projections look a bit like what Jonathan India did for the Reds in 2021 with a lot more stolen bases. But what’s immediately notable is the amount of plate appearances each player had in their rookie season. All five former winners stepped up to the plate at least 441 times.

That’s a number De La Cruz will not reach unless the Reds bat around multiple innings per game once he’s called up. But that doesn’t exactly mean De La Cruz is out of the Rookie of the Year race entirely, either. For one, multiple rookies have won the award with fewer than 400 plate appearances:

ROY Winners With Fewer Than 400 PA Year Name Team PA WAR BA OBP SLG HR RBI SB 2019 Yordan Alvarez Houston Astros 369 3.7 .313 .412 .655 27 78 0 2018 Shohei Ohtani Los Angeles Angels 367 4.1 .285 .361 .564 22 61 10 2013 Wil Myers Tampa Bay Rays 373 2.2 .293 .354 .478 13 53 5 2005 Ryan Howard Philadelphia Phillies 348 3.1 .288 .356 .567 22 63 0 1959 Willie McCovey San Francisco Giants 219 3.1 .354 .429 .656 13 38 2

It’s worth remembering Yordan Alvarez made his debut on June 9. Wil Myers came up on June 18. Ohtani remains a bit of an outlier here because of what he does on the mound, but those hitting numbers still add good context. More to the point: De La Cruz arriving by mid-June doesn’t take him out of the Rookie of the Year race, but he will need at least ~350 plate appearances in order to have a chance to contend for it — unless he becomes Willie McCovey and makes MLB pitchers look like Single-A prospects.

Let’s say De La Cruz comes up with 100 games left in the year and plays in 80 of them. He needs 4.375 plate appearance per game to reach that 350 threshold. Again, that’s not entirely impossible depending on where he’s hitting in the batting order. A player batting fourth or higher averages 4.3 plate appearances per game, according to Fangraphs, and you have to imagine the Reds went to get their youngest star as much experience in the big leagues as possible once he arrives.

But stepping up to the plate is one thing. What De La Cruz does from there is another. In order to match Ryan Howard’s 22 home runs, De La Cruz would need to average one home run every 16 plate appearances or, essentially, one every 3.6 games. Alvarez hit one every 13.6 plate appearances as a rookie for comparison.

Matching or exceeding Carroll’s projected home run total is by far the best way to catch up in the race for ROY.

Fortunately for the infielder, he’ll be playing home games at arguably the most slugger-friendly park in baseball. The Reds also still have more than half of their home games left on the schedule and play in an extremely weak NL Central. All of that lines up quite well for De La Cruz to make an immediate impact.

If he doesn’t, well, the ROY race might be over. The margin of error is absurdly slim for De La Cruz. Playing in fewer than 80 games or struggling in his first dozen or so appearances could end this conversation quick.

De La Cruz can’t just come up and be a guy. He has to be THE guy. Like India, Howard and Alvarez before him.

Finally, Carroll still has to go out and win this thing. Rookie of the Year awards aren’t handed out in April or May and playing a full season of Major League Baseball grinds the body down in ways rookies can seldom prepare for.  The Diamondbacks star still has a long way to go and he needs to stay healthy.

As we’ve seen from his stint in the minor leagues, De La Cruz doesn’t miss many opportunities to put on a show. This is the other way De La Cruz could wrestle Rookie of the Year away from Carroll — narrative and style.

De La Cruz just isn’t like many players we see in modern baseball. He’s oversized at shortstop, boasts ridiculous speed and has a knack for turning small mistakes into scoring opportunities. The more highlights we get from him, the more baseball fans as a whole gets to see his game and the more undeniable his ROY candidacy becomes.

There’s plenty of baseball left for De La Cruz this year. Let’s see what he can do with it before declaring the NL Rookie of the Year race over.

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