Brewers provide Reds fans with a glimmer of hope for an Elly De La Cruz extension

The Cincinnati Reds and extensions have been a hot topic of conversation over the past several months. Unlike most small-market teams, the Reds have not been very aggressive in locking down their young core.

Hunter Greene's extension hasn't worked out according to plan — namely because of durability concerns — and the few other players they've tried to extend, namely Matt McLain and Elly De La Cruz, have rebuffed their advances.

De La Cruz is the most important player for them to secure long-term, and it might have seemed like all hope was lost after he rejected a deal that would have eclipsed Joey Votto's franchise record 10-year, $225 million contract.

Part of the consternation is the fact that De La Cruz is a Scott Boras client, and MLB's super agent is notorious for rejecting extensions in order to bleed every last penny out of the open market. That brings us to the Milwaukee Brewers, who just came to terms with top prospect Cooper Pratt on a long-term extension. Pratt is yet another player on Boras' roster.

Reds still have hope to extend Elly De La Cruz, but it won't be cheap

There's a big difference between a potential MVP candidate in De La Cruz and a young shortstop who is MLB Pipeline's No. 62 prospect and has yet to take a big league at-bat in Pratt. With that said, it all comes down to value.

Pratt's deal is for eight years, $50.75 million. That will cover three pre-arb years, three arbitration years, and two free-agent seasons. Overall, the six years of team control, combined with the unknown commodity that Pratt is, brings the price tag down. For Boras and Pratt, it's a great value because it will give him a decent shot of outpacing his potential earnings over the next eight years had he rolled the dice and waited for free agency.

Where the Reds have gone wrong. Votto's deal isn't an adequate comparison for De La Cruz. Votto signed his deal in 2012, so accounting for inflation, $225 million today is worth nowhere near what it was then.

Some have bandied about the figure of a billion dollars as the number to secure the 24-year-old superstar's services for the next decade plus, which is a truly ridiculous number. Somewhere between $225 million and $1 billion will be the happy place.

If Cincinnati arrives at a number that approximates what De La Cruz can reasonably expect to make over the next 10-plus years, there's a decent chance that Boras won't stand in the way. The number will be sufficiently high that it's a nice payday for both the player and the agent, while clearing the risk that a major injury or other unforeseen circumstance torpedoes his earning potential ahead of free agency.

It won't be cheap, and it won't be easy, but it will be worth it if it means the Reds will have their homegrown star for the entirety of his prime.