As an entire division, the National League Central is somewhat underwhelming. But the team that sits at the top of it is anything but. The Reds, of all people, have gone from the lower middle of the pack to 10 games above .500 and a two-game lead over the second-place Brewers. They sat 29-35 on June 9, then they rode a 12-game winning streak to 41-35 and now sit 50-40.
The Reds, who'd been reduced to rubble by an ownership to whom the tank seemed the most comfortable accommodations. That was then. This is now. And Saturday night a child prodigy from the Dominican Republic, brought up to the club three days before that winning streak began, did something unseen by anyone wearing Reds silks since the year their first modern-era World Series triumph was tainted by a gang of tankers-for-profit out of Chicago.
It simply wasn't enough for Elly De La Cruz to break a five-all tie with an RBI single the other way to left against Brewers reliever Elvis Peguero in the top of the seventh. He stole second as Peguero went to 1-0 against Reds right fielder Jake Fraley. Then, he stole third without a throw as the count ran to 1-2 on Fraley.
Then, walking down the third base line when catching Peguero walking a little lazily back to the rubber, after taking a throw back from his catcher, De La Cruz broke into a sprint and stole home, diving across the plate as Peguero's throw home went offline arriving too late. The last Red to steal three in an inning was Greasy Neale in 1919.
De La Cruz stole three bases plus the Saturday thunder from the Dodgers' Mookie Betts tying Bobby Bonds with the most leadoff home runs approaching the All-Star break. (Betts hit his 10th such bomb on the second pitch of the game thrown by Angels starter Reid Detmers.) The road-running Red also stole the thunder from three Tigers pitchers (Matt Manning, Jason Foley, Alex Lange) combining to no-hit the Blue Jays, 2-0.
Once upon a time, a fuming Casey Stengel barked at his Yankee players after Jackie Robinson ran wild on them in a couple of World Series games, "You'd better check your lockers and make sure he didn't steal your jock straps." One might imagine Brewers manager Craig Counsell harboring similar thoughts after the Reds finished what they started, an 8-5 win.
Whatever Counsell said to his players privately, in public he appreciated De La Cruz's run for the rose. The sharp rook caught the Brewers all but sound asleep and didn't wait for their alarm clocks to ring. "It's on all of us really, on all of us," Counsell said postgame. "It was good baseball by him. We weren't aware enough, like, all over the place, on the field, in the dugout, everywhere."
There've been times when you began believing De La Cruz has been all over the place since he first turned up in Cincinnati. Consider what he's wreaked from the outset:
* In his second game as a Red, he blasted a two-run homer off the Dodgers' Noah Syndergaard that traveled so far to the rear of cozy-as-it-is Great American Ballpark fans could have been forgiven if the ball had astronauts aboard instead of the usual meal and stewardess.
* In his 15th game, against the National League East-beast Braves, De La Cruz hit for the first Reds cycle since Eric Davis in 1989 (and Davis's was the first since Hall of Famer Frank Robinson thirty years earlier), including the hardest-hit ball (116.6 miles per hour) ever hit in a cycle that wasn't even the home run. (It was a line double off the lower padding on the right center field fence.) And it helped the Reds win the 12th of that 12-game hitting streak.
* He needed a triple to complete the cycle and nailed it in the bottom of the sixth ... and took a hair shy of eleven seconds to get from home to third after lining one to right.
* From Davis's to De La Cruz's cycle, according to The Athletic's Jayson Stark, every other major league team hit for 122 cycles while the Reds surrendered 9 cycles themselves, including three to the Brewers' Christian Yelich just by himself.
* His 2-for-5 Saturday left De La Cruz at 12-for-22 over his previous five games.
* The Reds awoke Sunday morning at 22-7 since De La Cruz's callup.
* De La Cruz awoke Sunday with an .889 OPS, a 134 OPS+, an .889 stolen base percentage thus far with sixteen steals and only two arrests, and a .565 Real Batting Average. (Total bases + walks + intentional walks + sacrifice flies + hit by pitches, divided by total plate appearances.)
"He's not all power and speed and arm," said ESPN's Jeff Passan after De La Cruz's great-grand theft Saturday night. "He's got a phenomenal baseball mind, too."
"I was hyped," said the Reds' future Hall of Fame first baseman Joey Votto about De La Cruz stealing home after helping himself to second and third so swiftly. "Nobody does that. I mentioned this when he first got here. We're going to see things. We're going to see things that you just do not see on a baseball field."
This year's Reds already went from left-for-dead to a rip-roaring variety show before De La Cruz arrived. It's hard to believe now that some thought he might disrupt the vibe. He's merely sent it into triple overdrive. He's become the main attraction on a team where you never know who's going to come up with the big show when.
"It's Elly De La Cruz's video game," tweeted Kentucky WDRB News sports director Tyler Greever, after De La Cruz's Saturday night seventh-inning swath, "and we are all just watching him play."
The Reds. Must-see television. Who'd have thought?
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