NEW YORK — Cincinnati Reds outfielder Will Benson had the misfortune of having his locker next to Elly De La Cruz in the visitors clubhouse at Yankee Stadium, so instead of trying to wade through the throng of reporters around his teammate, he joined them.
“¿Pagado para ser un súper estrella?” Benson asked in Spanish.
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In English, Benson’s question, asked with an assist from Reds interpreter Jorge Merlos, was, “Are you paid to be a superstar?”
The fact a guy who had already been in front of the cameras after hitting his ninth homer of the season in the same four-run fifth inning that De La Cruz launched his 15th of the season, says quite a bit about just how the second-year player is developing into one of the game’s “súper estrellas.”
“That dude — it almost seems like when we get on stages like this, he steps it up a notch,” Reds starter Graham Ashcraft said.
Yankee Stadium was the first major-league park De La Cruz ever visited, well before he had signed with the Reds, just another kid from the Dominican Republic who dreamed of playing in the place where his favorite player, Derek Jeter, called home. Tuesday was the first time he’d stepped onto the field here, and he delivered with a triple to lead off the fourth, leading to the Reds’ first run, and then a two-run homer the next inning to cap the team’s scoring in a 5-4 win over the New York Yankees.
“For us, coming here we have families, we have people that talk the same language,” fellow Dominican Jeimer Candelario said. “This atmosphere is Latin.”
De La Cruz had what seemed to be his own cheering section, made up of friends, family and plenty of well-wishers from the Dominican community in New York. With a stomach full of Dominican home cooking from a friend’s wife (“the Dominican seasoning is different”), De La Cruz hit a ball into the right-field corner in his second at-bat to his friend and offseason workout partner Juan Soto. The two had already hugged after Soto reached second in the previous inning, and seeing the ball hit to him, De La Cruz was excited to get one up on him.
“He can’t catch me,” De La Cruz joked.
It was De La Cruz’s sixth triple of the season, tied with Arizona’s Corbin Carroll for the most in the National League. He scored easily on a grounder from Candelario.
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De La Cruz came to the plate in the fifth with Benson already having smacked a two-run homer to dead center to give the Reds a 3-0 lead, and after Yankees starter Luis Gil hit Jonathan India, New York manager Aaron Boone brought in lefty Caleb Ferguson to turn De La Cruz around to the right side, a common strategy.
As a rookie, De La Cruz had a .799 OPS against right-handed pitchers and a .495 against lefties. In 122 plate appearances against left-handers as a rookie, he struck out 49 times and hit just .184. Coming into Tuesday’s game, De La Cruz had closed the gap considerably, putting up an .844 OPS against right-handers and .739 against lefties. He also cut his strikeout rate against lefties, with 35 strikeouts in 124 plate appearances.
After watching two slurves on either side of the strike zone, Ferguson threw De La Cruz a fastball down and in. De La Cruz turned on it, lining the ball at 114.1 mph into the Reds bullpen. It was his fourth right-handed home run of the season, double his total of the previous season.
“We’ve liked Elly’s approach from the right side of the plate all year,” Reds manager David Bell said. “I know the results might not have been there early on, but everything he was doing from that side of the plate — really working to be short and direct — he’s done great things from the left side of the plate, so I understand why that move was made, and Elly just needs to continue to do his part, and he is.”
For his part, De La Cruz said last year he was much more comfortable left-handed, but that gap has thinned.
“I feel so much more confident, I’ve been working a lot, and I feel pretty good,” De La Cruz said of hitting from the right side.
In just his 183rd game in the big leagues, it was the fifth time De La Cruz had a triple and home run in the same game. According to MLB.com’s Sarah Langs, De La Cruz joined Ted Williams as the only player since 1901 to have five games with a triple and a home run in the first 185 games of their big-league career.
most games with at least 1 triple & HR in first 185 career games, since at least 1901:
Elly De La Cruz: 5 (today is game 183)
Ted Williams: 5 https://t.co/npmphu*qLhD— Sarah Langs (@SlangsOnSports) July 3, 2024
That De La Cruz would do something special in his first game at Yankee Stadium surprised nobody in the Reds clubhouse.
“Sometimes he’ll just hit, casually run and get a triple with no effort and then hit a 114 mph homer — no one else is really doing that but Elly,” Benson said. “It’s pretty cool to have a front-row seat.”
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De La Cruz could have a bigger stage later this month at Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game in Texas.
Last year, De La Cruz debuted against the Los Angeles Dodgers with a double, and then in just his second game hit a homer and triple in a big-league game for the first time. He hit for the cycle against the defending champion Atlanta Braves, and in his first game at Dodger Stadium, led off the game with a triple. In seven games at Dodger Stadium, De La Cruz is 10-for-31 with four extra-base hits and four steals.
“He’s just comfortable in those spots — he believes in himself,” Bell said. “He has confidence playing the game, and he’s just at the beginning. There’s going to be a lot bigger spots and bigger stages.”
(Photo: Rich Graessle / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
C. Trent Rosecrans is a senior writer for The Athletic covering the Cincinnati Reds and Major League Baseball. He previously covered the Reds for the Cincinnati Enquirer and the Cincinnati Post and has also covered Major League Baseball for CBSSports.com. Follow C. Trent on Twitter @ctrent
