Twenty home runs. Sixty stolen bases. From the shortstop position, in a single season.
No one in the history of baseball had ever done it. Then a 22-year-old who signed for $65,000 out of the DR went out and did it in his first full year. 25 and 67, to be exact.
That got our attention.
Every prospector in this game spends their money chasing the next five-tool unicorn. The teenager who might become something. The lottery ticket who hasn’t taken a big league swing yet. So why guess on the maybe when there’s a guy already doing the impossible?
Here’s our working theory. Elly De La Cruz is building a career profile baseball has genuinely never seen. Not just power. Not just speed. Both, stacked at a volume that lands him in some absurd company. The talent isn’t the question.
Whether his card market ever rewards it the way it should? That’s the question.
Let’s rip in.
De La Cruz-ing to Greatness
SS / Cincinnati Reds / Draft Info: International Signing (2018)
Elly De La Cruz is the rare player who makes you stop what you’re doing and watch. A switch-hitting shortstop at 6’6”, he’s a true five-tool talent, and the raw physical gifts might be unmatched anywhere in the game. Joey Votto, a former MVP who spent the better part of two decades in big league clubhouses, called him the best runner, the most powerful hitter, and the strongest arm he’d ever seen. That’s not nothing.
The headline tools are power and speed, and almost no one in history has paired them like this. He’s launched balls 450-plus feet from both sides of the plate. He runs like a sprinter and steals bases at will. The arm plays too. He once set a Statcast record with a 97.9 mph throw across the infield.
Now the flip side.
Consistency and contact are the open questions. His strikeout rate has lived in the high-20s to low-30s, and pitchers have learned to attack the swing-and-miss, especially from his weaker side. 2025 is a fair snapshot of where he is right now. He played all 162 games and put up a solid all-around line (.264, 22 HR, 86 RBI, 37 SB), but he faded down the stretch after a quad injury, hitting just four homers after the break. The ceiling is an MVP. The floor question is whether the bat shows up every night.
Defensively, it’s a mixed bag. The tools scream Gold Glove. The public metrics haven’t always agreed, and there’s a real debate about whether he sticks at short or eventually slides to third. For now, Cincinnati is committed to him up the middle.
Bottom line: a 24-year-old, two-time All-Star who’s already one of the most electric players in the sport, with a ceiling that makes him a franchise piece and a hobby darling. The talent is there. The consistency just has to catch up.
Do The Reds Help or Hurt?
Collectors know the hobby punishes great players in bad situations. Context matters. When we size up the ecosystem around a star, we’re looking at three things:
Coaching stability: Is there a system to grow in, or constant turnover?
Front office / ownership: Are they building a winner, or making questionable moves?
Roster outlook: Is the supporting cast real, or still finding itself?
Let’s run Elly through it.
The coaching is the easy part. Terry Francona is a future Hall of Famer. Two titles in Boston, three Manager of the Year awards, and as of 2025 he’s the 13th manager ever to reach 2,000 wins. In year one in Cincinnati he pushed the Reds to their first full-season playoff berth since 2013. He’s a player-first communicator with a long track record of winning with young talent, and he’s publicly preached patience with Elly specifically. For a high-ceiling, still-inconsistent star, that’s about the best voice in the building you could ask for. The only real caveat is age. Francona is 67 and has stepped away from jobs before citing his health. Longevity is fair to wonder about.
Ownership is where it gets complicated. The name on the door just changed, sort of. Bob Castellini handed controlling ownership to his son Phil in early 2026, the end of a succession plan that started in 2024. Same family. Same philosophy. And that philosophy is the organization’s central flaw. The Reds run a self-imposed break-even model, which parks payroll in the $90 to 120M range and had them around 21st in MLB spending in 2025. Phil Castellini is the guy behind the infamous “Where you gonna go?” line to frustrated fans. That wound hasn’t fully closed.
There are faint signs of life. The 2026 luxury-tax payroll climbed to roughly $147.7M, their highest in years, and they made a genuine run at Kyle Schwarber before he re-signed with Philadelphia. But the pattern is clear. This front office builds through trades and cheap one-year reclamation deals, not big free-agent swings. Some land (the Ke’Bryan Hayes deadline deal brought an elite glove to third). Some don’t (the Candelario signing was a disaster, $16M in dead money still owed in 2026). Progress here comes in inches.
The roster has real talent, with a lot to prove. Start with the good news on the mound. Chase Burns, the 23-year-old second-year righty and No. 2 overall pick in 2024, has been outright filthy: a 2.00 ERA, 102 strikeouts in 85.2 innings, and a 220 ERA+ that says he’s been more than twice as effective as a league-average arm. That’s a Cy Young-caliber season. Behind him, Hunter Greene is targeting a July return from elbow surgery, and a healthy Greene gives Cincinnati a top-end one-two punch most rotations can’t match.
After that pair, it’s a lot of “show me you can do it again.” Abbott, Singer, and Lowder all flashed as rookies and have since cooled off. The position group around Elly (McLain, Hayes, Suárez, Steer, Stephenson, a deep bench of young bats) is flexible and promising, but outside of Elly there’s no established superstar at the plate.
So how do we read the situation?
Short term, cautiously optimistic. The manager is an asset, the young pitching is legit, and this is a Wild Card-caliber roster. Long term, we’re more skeptical, and it has nothing to do with Elly. It’s the money. The break-even model caps the ceiling, and a bigger issue looms over everything: Elly is a Scott Boras client set to hit free agency after 2029, entering his age-28 season. Small-market Cincinnati is going to have a very hard time keeping him.
Good place to develop. Good place to make a playoff run. Tough place to build a champion, and a tough place to hold onto a franchise cornerstone once the bill comes due.
GOAT Watch 🐐
At The Hobby Wire, we’ve never understood why unproven talent commands higher prices than the true legends of a sport. If a modern rookie card is outselling the GOAT at their position, that’s your signal to cash out.
When looking at power hitting shortstops, controversy aside, you can only look in the direction of Alex Rodriguez.
The numbers here can be a bit deceiving.
Elly looks like he’s wiping the floor with A-Rod stats-wise. But here’s the thing.
The first 2 seasons for A-Rod were non-starters. 1994 was strike shortened. In 1995 he bounced between the majors and AAA a lot. But in 1996, he racked up 9.4 WAR, almost as much as Elly has in his first three seasons combined. That ‘96 season got him an All-Star nod, Silver Slugger, and a batting title. De La Cruz’s two All-Star appearances are impressive, but he hasn’t even remotely had a season like A-Rod in ‘96.
The hobby seems to think so too. A-Rod's Upper Deck SP Foil Parallel outsells Elly's Rainbow Foil by a significant margin in a PSA 10.
Career Projection
There's no debate that Elly is already a star. The debate is what kind of career he stacks on top of it. So let's lay out the markers.
*Projections based on Elly De La Cruz’s career pace through the 2026 MLB season.
4 Years (Current Stats)
11.7 WAR • 483 Hits • 72 HR • 243 RBI • 149 SB
10 Years
48.4 WAR • 1,669 Hits • 234 HR • 842 RBI • 400 SB
15 Years
72.0 WAR • 2,430 Hits • 340 HR • 1,229 RBI • 559 SB
20 Years
88.7 WAR • 2,967 Hits • 414 HR • 1,501 RBI • 671 SB
Every one of those lines is elite. WAR, homers, RBI, all of it grades out as a great big league career. But here’s the thing the hobby needs to understand about Elly.
Only one category cracks the all-time top 20. And it cracks it loud.
The steals.
By year 10, his 400 bags would already make him the clear active leader (as of 2025, no active player even sits in the top 100). By year 15, 559 steals would land him right around 20th all-time, sliding past Davey Lopes. Push it to a full 20 years and 671 steals puts him 12th all-time, wedged between Joe Morgan and Willie Wilson, ahead of names like Campaneris, Lofton, and Wills.
There’s a near-miss worth flagging too. That 2,967-hit projection at year 20 lands just short of the 3,000-hit club. It’s an outside shot, but a shot.
Aside from an injury that took Elly out for 19 games in 2026, De La Cruz has been remarkably healthy. With the average retirement age for elite shortstops being 37.5, we can’t see why he wouldn’t hit that marker and then some. We’re slotting Elly in for a 19-year career. Calling it quits at age 39.
Hobby Heat Map
Time to put a finger on the pulse. To get a real read on how collectors feel about Elly, we're tracking one low-end rookie and one high-end rookie across his career.
Our Low-End Pick:
2024 Topps Chrome #244 Elly De La Cruz Refractor PSA 10
We were midway through that incredible 25/67 season when PSA 10s of his Chrome Refractor first hit the market. The early sales were hot. People paid north of $200 for the first few.
Then a pattern set in. And it’s the same pattern every year.
The hype runs Elly’s cards up early in the season, then cools the moment collectors and investors remember he plays for the Reds. Look at his average sales and you get a remarkably straight line. 2026 is the textbook example. The season average sits at $124. But the last five sales, with Elly sidelined and Cincinnati slipping below .500, have dropped 17%.
It really looks like Elly’s low-end market is tied to the team’s success. That’s a problem. Because right now, the team’s success hinges on Elly, and pretty much Elly alone.
Our High-End Pick:
2024 Topps Chrome Sapphire Edition #CSA-ED Elly De La Cruz Autograph Red /5
Because who doesn’t love a high-end color-match auto.
Up at the top of the market, the story rhymes. The price history is another near-straight line. The card is up about 24% since the start of 2026, which sounds great until you remember what’s driving it. Time will tell if it gives that back should the Reds miss the postseason, which is exactly where they look headed.
What’s His True Value?
A 19-season career for Elly De La Cruz could leave him with stats around the following: 85.9 WAR, 2,877 Hits, 402 HR, 1456 RBI, 652 SB. No one in the history of baseball has racked up 400+ homers and 600+ stolen bases.
The hobby has never cared too much for stolen bases as a stat, with the exception of the all-time leader Rickey Henderson. Steals aside, Elly De La Cruz is looking to have a career incredibly similar to that of another elite switch-hitter, Chipper Jones, but with wheels.
Chipper's PSA 10 Rookie Card sold for an average of $118 in the last 30 days with a card population of 5,772. Elly's 2024 Topps base card is selling for less than half of that ($40.71) with a lower pop of 4,637.
Adjusting for population gives Elly De La Cruz a long-term value estimate of $146.88, a 260% increase.
Our Verdict
Elly De La Cruz is one of the most fun players in baseball to watch and one of the more fascinating ones to collect. The talent is historic. The projection points to a player the all-time leaderboards will remember, and the population-adjusted math says the card is underpriced for what he could become.
For us, that’s enough. Elly is a buy.
He has all the talent to back it up. The real question was never whether Elly is good. It’s whether the Reds can support him long term. And we have our doubts.
Here’s why that doesn’t scare us off. The first real jump we expect in Elly’s market is his contract year. He’s a Scott Boras client, which tells you exactly how this ends. Elly is going to play the field when free agency comes. Reds or not, the man is getting PAID. That kind of payday is a story, and stories move cards.
The average collector will start to connect those dots a year or two from now. We’d rather be early.
Which is what makes right now so interesting. His cards do the same thing every summer, cooling off while the Reds fade. Pair that seasonal dip with a market that hasn’t priced in the contract-year narrative yet, and this season plus the coming offseason shape up as one of the better buying windows you’ll get on Elly.
And here’s what keeps pulling us back. Elly’s cards look like a win on both clocks. Short term, the contract-year buzz and that summer dip hand you a clean entry with room to run. Long term, our population-adjusted projection points to a 260% climb from today’s price. A card you can feel good flipping and feel good holding? In this hobby, that’s a rarity.
The talent will keep showing up. We’re buying before the rest of the hobby remembers to.
What’s your read on Elly De La Cruz’s long-term ceiling? Drop your thoughts in the comments.
Disclaimer: The content in The Hobby Wire is for informational and entertainment purposes only. Commentary, analysis, and opinions on sports cards, rookies, and the hobby are not financial, investment, or professional advice. Collectors should always do their own research before buying, selling, or trading cards. Market values are volatile and can change rapidly—past performance is not a guarantee of future results.
Unless specified, all pricing references are based on the Prizm/Refractor parallels of an athlete’s Chrome rookie card, with prices from market movers, alt.xyz & 130pt.com.
Any odds mentioned were derived from DraftKings Sportsbook.