The Cincinnati Reds underwent significant changes between 2024 and 2025. Many of these changes occurred in the coaching staff. While pitching coach Derek Johnson returns, the club has a new manager in Terry Francona, a new hitting coach in former Reds infielder Chris Valaika, and new assistant hitting coaches in Alex Pelaez, a former Reds minor league hitting coach, and Will Remillard, a newcomer to the organization. They’ve already started working to help Elly De La Cruz reduce his strikeouts by adjusting his swing. Charlie Goldsmith wrote about the changes in his newsletter.
“It’s a little different of a setup this year,” new hitting coach Chris Valaika explained. “The most important thing we’ll work on with Elly is keeping him aggressive but also improving his forward movement. Moving more through the center of his body improves his adaptability. It facilitates his decision-making.”
The decision-making element seems to be the most crucial. When Elly De La Cruz makes contact, we all know what occurs. It may be magical. However, he led the league in strikeouts last season, with a strikeout rate of 31.3% – the tenth worst in baseball among players with at least 400 plate appearances. The strikeouts did not prevent the Reds’ shortstop from being a very effective player. He compensated by walking at a high rate, hitting for power, leading the league in thefts, and giving significant defensive value. At the end of the 2024 season, he was the ninth most valuable position player in baseball, according to Fangraphs’ WAR.
How much better could it go with better “decisions” in the batter’s box? That’s the question the Reds’ hitting coaches want answered. But first, let’s discuss previous decisions. The first thing we should look at is how often he swung at pitches outside the zone. Last season, he hit non-strikes 28.2% of the time. That’s slightly higher than the league average of 28.6%. It ranked 104th out of 207 players who made at least 400 plate appearances last season.
Swinging at pitches outside the zone is something you do not want players to do. Even “bad ball hitters” do not perform well on non-strikes as a group. Perhaps they excel at one aspect of “out of the zone” when it comes to a specific pitch, but generally, no one is successful with it. One may argue that it is sometimes better to make contact with a pitch out of the zone than not make contact with it; if you have two strikes, making contact is preferable because there is a chance it will turn into a hit. However, if there are fewer than two strikes, the chances of obtaining a hit on contact outside the zone are low on contact out of the zone and getting another chance at perhaps a better pitch could be in your favor of getting a hit later in the at-bat (or drawing a walk, etc.).
In 2024, Elly De La Cruz made contact on 45.1% of pitches he swung at outside the zone. This was a considerable decrease from his rookie rate of 55.9% in 2023. The league made contact 56.2% of the time when swinging at non-strikes, meaning De La Cruz performed much lower than average in this category. He finished 180th out of 207 players with at least 400 plate appearances in 2024.
When it comes to pitches outside the zone, the decision-making process isn’t terrible. He swings at a league-average rate. You’d like to see that improve (and it did from 2023 to 2024), and that type of thing normally happens when players gain more experience, though it’s usually a gradual process rather than a giant leap ahead all at once. The issue with his strikezone expansion is considerably more tied to his failure to make contact when he does.
But swing decisions aren’t just related to expanding the strikezone; most guys have some spots within the strikezone that they’re not as good with as other parts of the zone. When it comes to two strikes, you’ve got to swing when it’s in the zone, but before that, you might be better off leaving a pitch in the zone but not in “your zone” to come by and get another shot.
When it comes to Elly De La Cruz’s in-zone swinging, we can see that he hit strikes 58.1% of the time. The league as a whole swung 66% of the time for strikes. De La Cruz laid off of strikes more than the average player. He was near the bottom of the league when it came to swinging at strikes – ranking 190th of 207 players last year.
While swinging more at better pitches isn’t the only way to improve, it’s certainly a step in the right direction. Last season, Juan Soto had the lowest swing rate in baseball, but that was because he rarely expanded the strikezone. His strike rate was 57.6%, which ranked him 176th out of 207.
Let’s take a look at how Elly De La Cruz handled non-strikes and strikes in 2024. I’ll preface this by mentioning that these figures may not be perfect, but they’ll be near. This data isn’t exactly publicly available in an easy-to-use manner, so I have to run the math myself using publicly available data and parse everything out myself. It’s also worth mentioning that these statistics will be based solely on swings at the end of an at-bat. That means that a swing-and-miss is only considered if it was the third strike.
On pitches out of the strikezone, Elly De La Cruz had 27 hits and hit .134 and slugged .178. When it comes to pitches in the strikezone, Elly De La Cruz had 133 hits and hit .317 while slugging .609. While I don’t have the numbers for every player in baseball, I’ve done this exercise with plenty of players over the years and the numbers are similar to this in the sense that the disparity is like this. Strikes are significantly easier to do damage on than non-strikes.
The data show that simply swinging at fewer non-strikes would result in higher overall numbers for Cincinnati’s emerging superstar. It would result in fewer outs made on contact, increasing batting average and slugging by lowering the denominator. However, given our data on how De La Cruz handles strikes, it is likely that more strikes will be observed, as well as more quality hits and extra-base hits.
Getting Elly De La Cruz to swing at non-strikes less frequently is a positive start. However, if he can enhance his performance in the zone, he will most certainly experience significant gains. He’s not particularly aggressive in the strike zone. That isn’t always a terrible thing, but most guys could benefit by swinging at strikes more frequently than they do. Again, the guys hit strikes well.
We’ve noticed that De La Cruz does not swing at balls in the zone as much as the average golfer. So encouraging him to do that a little more is most likely a good step in the right direction. But there is another concern here. He does not make enough contact when he swings at pitches in the zone. Last season, his contact rate on zone pitches was 79.4%. This was down from 82.9% in 2023 as a rookie. Last year’s league average rate was 85.2%.
Anyone could benefit greatly from a significant improvement in one area. However, for a player like Elly De La Cruz, who can make magic happen with contact – whether it’s a 450-foot home run or a ball in the gap that a mere mortal would only turn into a double that he threatens to score on if there’s even the slightest mistake in getting the ball back to the infield – it could go a little further.
However, making significant improvements in one area is not always required to make a significant difference. Small changes in all of these areas are likely to make a significant influence.
Every spring, we hear stories from almost every team about how someone has a new opportunity that will help them take the next step. Most of the time, we do not witness it happen. Maybe that’s what we’ll think about when August arrives. But we might also reflect on how this had a significant impact. Now we can just sit back, wait, and see.
