Is Reds shortstop Elly De La Cruz being underrated?

This week has seen Fangraphs unveil their positional rankings across baseball. Prior to today they had already released the rankings at catcher, first base, and at second base. The Cincinnati Reds did not do so well at first base, were solid in the catcher rankings, and they came in at the #6 spot in the rankings at second base thanks in large part to Matt McLain. Today they moved forward in the series and dropped the rankings at shortstop. The Reds had another good ranking, but like second base, they came in at the #6 spot.

If you were thinking to yourself that you’d be hard pressed to find five better shortstops than Elly De La Cruz around Major League Baseball, you may not be alone. The position, though, is absolutely stacked – particularly at the top. To put it into a better perspective – the top second base group in baseball was the Texas Rangers. If they were grouped into the shortstop position they would have gone from being ranked 1st to being ranked 9th.

Fangraphs uses the Fangraphs Depth Chart projections for this series, which has De La Cruz hitting .259/.332/.468 with positive baserunning and defensive value. That all adds up to 4.9 WAR. That is enough to rank 5th among all shortstops. If you’re trying to figure out the disconnect on how he’s 5th but the Reds are 6th it’s because Corey Seager isn’t far behind him on the individual level, but he’s projected for 28 fewer games played and the value from his backup pushes the Rangers ahead of the Reds.

Where we get to the question posed in the title of is Elly De La Cruz underrated? I guess that depends on where you stand. Last season, using Fangraphs version of WAR, the Reds shortstop had 6.4 WAR. This season he’s expected to hit almost exactly the same as he did last season (at least according to their metric of choice). But the projection has him being worth far less value on the bases and far less valuable in the field.

At 6.4 WAR, De La Cruz and the Reds shortstop position (where De La Cruz is accounting for 665 or the 700 total plate appearances given in these projections), would vault up to the #3 spot. Defensive value is the most fluctuating stat there is. It’s not necessarily a stat that the player himself can fully dictate. Guys have to not only hit the ball in their general direction, but they need to hit it enough in their direction where it’s possible to still make plays on but not directly at them enough that it’s always *easy* to make plays on. It’s not a direct link to a players skillset as much as it is a combination of skillset and opportunity. It’s similar to RBI in the sense that there is some skillset involved in order to get a lot of them, but it’s also about how many chances you get to show off that skillset that leads to cashing in on those plays.

What’s interesting is that Elly De La Cruz and the Reds rank 6th here, but the specific projection used in the article thinks that he’s going to take a pretty big step backwards when it comes to his game that doesn’t take place in the batters box. While it still thinks he will be a good baserunner and fielder, the projection has his defense and baserunning being 41% less valuable than it was in the 2024 season. That leaves a whole lot of “room for improvement” in this projection, and it feels like it’s really selling him short.