“He has handled it really well,” Francona said. “If he didn’t he wouldn’t be playing every day. I love the fact that he wants to do that. I really do. I don’t know if that’s always in a player’s best interest. I used to do that with Rolen. Anyone around Scotty knows how much he wanted to play. But he’d run himself right into the ground. I don’t see that with Elly. If I thought that was happening, I’d give him a day regardless of how much he yelled at me.”
De La Cruz’s stats on the season are solid, but he hasn’t hit for much power since July 1.
“Guys don’t hit .350,” Francona said. “There are ups and downs and swings. There are different reasons. Sometimes, you run into pitching that’s pretty good and maybe you’re not quite where you want to be. I don’t worry too much about him. If he’s healthy, run him out there and let him go.”
De La Cruz requested an extra at-bat last Saturday during a blowout loss against the Arizona Diamondbacks. Francona had pulled most of the Reds’ starters, but De La Cruz is working to get back into a rhythm.
A quad injury that has been lingering has prevented De La Cruz from fully hitting his stride. He also isn’t running on the bases as much as he did last season.
Francona said that he doesn’t get too caught up in De La Cruz’s limited power production over the last two months.
“You want to see good at-bats,” Francona said. “He’s an ultra-aggressive kid to begin with. Sometimes, he starts chasing on the breaking ball out of the zone. When he gets pitches in here, he’s usually ok. I also think he gets pitched really tough as most good hitters do.”
Francona has also identified something that De La Cruz could work on heading into next season.
There are moments on the bases where De La Cruz is sliding into second on a stolen base attempt already after the pitch has been fouled off.
“The last piece for him is when he steals, he doesn’t pick up the ball,” Francona said.
That’s a difficult skill to work on during the season because you don’t want players running sprints in drills before games late in the season, but De La Cruz could spend more time focusing on that next spring.
“When you know where the ball is, you can see how devastating he can be,” Francona said. “We can’t do it now — we can’t start practicing stealing bases in August. If the majority of our guys, when they take that second step, if they can glance in and get used to it, they’re going to be much more intelligent base runners because they’re going to know where the ball is. If we can help him with that, it will really make a difference.”
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