Elly De La Cruz keeps turning every night into a new entry in the Reds record book.
On Wednesday against the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Cincinnati shortstop launched his fifth straight game with a home run, a new career best and a number that puts him right on the doorstep of franchise history. That run is tied for the second-longest homer streak in Reds history. The standard still belongs to Joey Votto, who homered in seven consecutive games in 2021.
The power surge is only part of the story. De La Cruz has also reached base in 17 straight games, a stretch that goes back to Aug.
- Over that span, he is hitting .449/.500/.812 with six home runs and 13 RBI.
The blast on Wednesday was his 26th of the season, which gives him the Reds single-season record for a switch-hitter. He had already owned the mark himself after hitting 25 in 2024.
De La Cruz is piling up extra-base hits at a pace Cincinnati hasn’t seen in a long time, too. He now has 222 in his career, matching Dmitri Young for the third-most by a switch hitter in Reds history.
Zoom out to his first four seasons, and the number gets even louder: his 222 extra-base hits are the second-most by any Reds player through four seasons since 1900. Only Hall of Famer Frank Robinson is ahead of him with 267.
There’s still more history within reach before the year is over. De La Cruz needs five stolen bases to become the first player in Reds history - and only the eighth in Major League Baseball since 1900 - to swipe at least 30 bags in each of his first four seasons. Bobby Witt Jr. was the last to do it, running the streak from 2022 to 2025.
What stands out most, though, is the jump he has made against left-handed pitching. After hitting just .236/.276/.342 with a .618 OPS against lefties last season, De La Cruz is up to .350 with a .657 slugging percentage and a 1.075 OPS against left-handed pitching this year. All three of those numbers lead qualified Major League hitters.
There have been glimpses of this version of De La Cruz before. Now the Reds are seeing the whole thing come together.
And with the way he’s swinging it, he has another shot to keep adding to the history books this weekend against the Brewers.
In Other News...
Reds Rotation Has A Problem That Goes Beyond Injuries
The Reds have spent much of 2026 trying to patch together a starting rotation that has been hit hard by injuries to Hunter Greene and Nick Lodolo, but the trouble goes deeper than simply missing names on the injury report. Even with Chase Burns giving them a bright spot, the group as a whole has not resembled a rotation that can consistently carry a staff through games and keep Cincinnati in control deep into the night.
The numbers point to a more troubling issue: the Reds have been near the bottom of the league in two-strike strikeout rate, opponent OPS with two strikes and average exit velocity in those counts. In other words, even when pitchers get ahead, they are not finishing at-bats often enough, and hitters are still doing damage in spots where the advantage should belong to the pitcher. [Read more 🡒]
Reds Pitching Collapse Is Making Brewers Dominance Even Harder To Watch
The Reds keep finding new ways to make a bad stretch look worse, and the latest chapter came in Milwaukee. Cincinnati has been outscored 34-1 in recent games, capped by a 20-0 loss to the Brewers that went down as the worst shutout defeat in franchise history. Even with Matt McLain scratched and Ke'Bryan Hayes and Juan Brito making defensive adjustments, the Reds could not stop the bleeding, and the sight of the division leader pulling away has only made the slide sting more.
Saturday brought a different kind of frustration, with the offense showing some life in a 13-9 loss while Hunter Greene had a rough outing and Eugenio Suarez went deep. The problem for Cincinnati is that one spirited night at the plate does little to change the bigger picture as the club approaches elimination from playoff contention. Chase Burns is lined up for the next start, and the Reds are trying to stabilize things before the seasons final stretch gets away from them entirely. [Read more 🡒]
Reds Pitching Collapse Just Hit An Alarming New Low
A bad stretch can usually be explained away by one rough inning, one untimely error or one tired bullpen night. What the Reds are living through right now is something far more alarming. Their 13-9 loss to the Brewers on Wednesday extended a historic collapse on the mound, with Cincinnati getting rocked again after a pair of blowouts had already sent the staff into dangerous territory. Brady Singers outing only added to the damage, as he lasted four innings and gave up eight runs while the Brewers kept piling on.
The bigger issue is the scale of the damage, which now feels impossible to ignore in the context of a season that still has plenty of baseball left. Milwaukee put up a franchise-record 33 runs across two games against the Reds, a jarring number even by the standards of a bad week. Cincinnati has to find a way to stop the bleeding soon, because the rotation and bullpen are no longer just struggling - they are making the wrong kind of history. [Read more 🡒]