Over the span of a few hours Wednesday night, Elly De La Cruz and Corbin Carroll might have turned the National League Rookie of the Year race into a two-man race and Major League Baseball’s version of the epic game of H-O-R-S-E Larry Bird and Michael Jordan played for Jordan’s lunch in a classic early 1990s McDonalds ad.
(Which one wears Jordan’s fine-for-the-times-but-oh-my-goodness-what-were-any-of-us-thinking Zubaz shirt and shorts?)
First, De La Cruz — the Cincinnati Reds infielder who made his debut Tuesday and has been compared to Reds legend Eric Davis, whose no. 44 he wears — hit his first major league homer, an absolute laser off Los Angeles Dodgers right-hander Noah Syndergaard that was measured at 458 feet and landed in the last row of the right field bleachers at Great American Ball Park.
In his next at-bat, De La Cruz tripled and needed just 10.83 seconds to sprint the 270 feet from home to third. It was the fastest home-to-third time in Major League Baseball this season and the second-fastest home-to-third time since 2020 behind…Carroll, who legged out a triple in 10.75 seconds on Oct. 3, 2022.
That’s almost as fast as De La Cruz has gained on Carroll in the Rookie of the Year race. Carroll (-135 at BetMGM) remains the favorite as of June 8, but De La Cruz is right behind him at +350 — down from +1800 way back on June 2 and from +500 as of Wednesday morning.
With Carroll and the Arizona Diamondbacks in Washington to face the Nationals at the same time as the Reds hosted the Dodgers, the race could have tightened even more in real time Wednesday night. But Carroll, who opened his night by going 1-for-2 with a stolen base and a run scored in the first two innings of the Diamondbacks’ 6-2 win, wrested the spotlight away from De La Cruz over the final two-thirds of the evening.
While De La Cruz struck out in his final two at-bats of the Reds’ 8-6 win over the Los Angeles Dodgers (another rookie, Will Benson, hit the walk-off two-run homer), Carroll completed his first career four-hit game by collecting hits — each more impressive than the last — in his final three at-bats.
After singling and being thrown out trying to leg out a double in the fifth, Carroll singled leading off the seventh and scored on a double by Evan Longoria (who, in today’s let’s make you feel old moment, won the AL Rookie of the Year in 2008, when Carroll turned eight years old). Carroll ended his night by hitting a two-run ninth-inning opposite field homer measured at a tidy 106 mph off the bat.
That hit lifted his average to an even .300 — a mere 103 points behind Luis Arraez for the league lead, but more evidence of the rarefied air Carroll is occupying both among his peers and recent rookie hitters in general. Carroll leads National League rookies in average, homers (11) and OPS (.928) while sharing the lead in stolen bases (18) and ranking fourth in RBIs (27).
No qualifying rookie has hit .300 since 2019, when Bryan Reynolds (.314) and Kevin Newman (.308) did so for the Pittsburgh Pirates. Only six qualifying rookies this century have posted an OPS of .900 or higher, and all six have won the Rookie of the Year.
In any normal year, Carroll would be an overwhelming favorite to join his predecessors as a Rookie of the year winner, especially as a consensus top-10 prospect leading a team into playoff contention ahead of most expectations. The Diamondbacks, who haven’t made the postseason since 2017 and are two years removed from a 110-loss campaign, lead the NL West with a 37-25 record.
But De La Cruz — whose OPS through two games, for what it is worth, is a mind-boggling 1.841 — is not a normal early June promotion, even by the standards of hotly hyped prospects recalled once the the deadlines for receiving a full season worth of service time and/or becoming eligible for super two arbitration status are in the rearview mirror.
Since 2000, 13 players — including 2022 NL Rookie of the Year Michael Harris II, who was recalled by the Atlanta Braves on May 28 — have won the Rookie of the Year despite not debuting until after May 1.
De La Cruz — who stands 6-foot-5 but can play shortstop and third base — entered the season as a consensus top-10 prospect before hitting .298 with 12 homers, 11 steals and a 1.031 OPS at Triple-A Louisville.
Even if the Reds (29-33 and five games behind the Milwaukee Brewers) can’t win a wide-open NL Central, De La Cruz’s unicorn-like skills and status as the potential savior for the long-suffering Reds — who haven’t won a World Series since 1990, haven’t won a playoff series since 1995 and have posted just two winning seasons since 2014 — gives him the kind of narrative that can make a difference in a close race.
And barring injury or an unexpected dip in performance by Carroll and De La Cruz, this will be a close two-man race — sorry, James Outman and Francisco Alvarez — for the next three-plus months.
Perhaps it can be settled when the Reds host the Diamondbacks from July 21-23 and when Cincinnati visits Arizona from Aug. 24-27 — when it’ll become a matter of who can hit a homer out of a stadium that bounces off the expressway…over the river…off the billboard…through the window…off the wall and into a basket in a nearby gym, catching nothing but net.
