Elly De La Cruz’s second-half meltdown just cost the Reds a Silver Slugger moment

This year's National League Silver Slugger Award nominees were released on Wednesday and not a single member of the Cincinnati Reds roster made the cut. Seeing as how the Reds' lineup underperformed all season long, this isn't overly surprising.

Elly De La Cruz, however, was in prime position to not only be named a finalist for the NL Silver Slugger Award, but actually win it. Heading into the All-Star break, one could make the argument that De La Cruz was one of the top-10 players in Major League Baseball.

Before the Midsummer Classic, the Reds shortstop posted a .284/.359/.495 slash line with 18 doubles, 18 home runs, and 63 RBI. Francisco Lindor of the New York Mets was the only NL shortstop with more round-trippers than De La Cruz heading into the All-Star break, but Elly's .854 OPS was nearly 70 points better.

Elly De La Cruz’s second-half meltdown just cost the Reds a Silver Slugger moment

But De La Cruz's numbers fell off the map during the second-half of the 2025 season. From July 18 through September 18, the Reds shortstop posted an inexcusable .225/.287/.326 slash line with a 65 wRC+ and a 28.7% strikeout rate. Over those 247 plate appearances, De La Cruz had just one home run.

Things got so bad that Reds manager Terry Francona was forced to move De La Cruz out of the No. 3 spot in the batting order — a place he'd called home since Opening Day. Tito bumped Elly all the way back to seventh in the lineup on September 15 after watching his superstar struggle at the dish for nearly two months.

Of course, after that alteration, De La Cruz finally emerged from the doldrums and hit .279/.404/.535 with three home runs over the final two weeks of the 2025 regular season. Francona probably wishes he'd have made that change a few weeks earlier, huh?

The finalists for the NL Silver Slugger at shortstop this season are Lindor, Geraldo Perdomo (Arizona Diamondbacks), and Trea Turner (Philadelphia Phillies). The winner will be announced next month, and while De La Cruz isn't in the mix this year, perhaps the Reds infielder will bounce back in big way during the 2026 season and return to being one of the best hitting shortstops in the game.