Matt Chapman's revival could offer Reds' Elly De La Cruz a secret to cut down Ks

Elly De La Cruz certainly turned heads in his first full Major League season in 2024. Blazing speed, daring steals, towering homers, and… a whole lot of strikeouts. The Cincinnati Reds shortstop’s 218 Ks outranked all other batters and marks the fourth-worst season of all time. To reverse this trend, De La Cruz could look to former All-Star Matt Chapman.

In 2021, Chapman, then with the Oakland A’s, produced the worst season of his career to date. His stat line plummeted despite walking a career-high 80 times and logging his third 20-plus homer season. He finished the year barely over the Mendoza Line with a .210 batting average and 202 strikeouts, trailing only Joey Gallo. It was an ugly year by the standards of a player who twice finished in the top 10 of AL MVP voting.

Matt Chapman may provide a path for Elly De La Cruz to reduce his strikeouts and maintain his power

Prior to the 2022 season, the A’s traded Chapman to Toronto, where he developed a new approach at the plate. He began to drive the ball to all fields with nine of his 17 homers in 2023 going to the opposite field. Chapman also started translating his elite barrel rate – he has finished in the 85th percentile or better in each of the past six seasons – into hard contact. His average exit velocity jumped from 89.7 to 92.2 in his first season with the Blue Jays.

De La Cruz could benefit from following Chapman’s lead. He tends to be a fairly balanced hitter, partly due to his switch-hitter status, but he pulled the ball slightly more and lofted fly balls at a higher rate in 2024. Chapman, on the other hand, found success with line drives to all fields. Conveniently, that seems to be Reds manager Terry Francona’s hitting philosophy as well.

The hard contact is especially important to De La Cruz’s development. Even casual fans associate the Reds phenom with scorching grounders and jaw-dropping blasts, but he doesn’t hit the ball hard consistently. His hard-hit rate, the percentage of hits with an exit velocity of 95 mph or more, is 45.7%, good for 76th percentile. That’s good. But it’s not elite.

His squared-up rate, which measures how effectively a batter hits the ball given the comparison between actual and best-possible exit velocity, is even worse. De La Cruz squared up just 22.2% of batted balls in 2024.

This is where the strikeouts come in. If De La Cruz can approach his at-bats with the bat speed, timing, and ability to hit to all fields of Chapman, he should be able to make better contact. Considering De La Cruz has a large strike zone due to his height, contact is key.

More Cincinnati Reds News and Rumors