We are back once again with one of my favorite series of the offseason. If Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine have taught us anything it’s that everyone loves the long ball. Ok, perhaps that wasn’t the precise takeaway from those two guys, but long home runs have been something people have talked about for over a hundred years. Only in the last decade or so, though, have we truly been able to measure their distance with *some* accuracy. Thanks to ball tracking in the big leagues we can compare 1-to-1 how far a baseball went. Every week for the next few months we’re going to be counting down the 10 longest home runs hit by the Cincinnati Reds in the 2025 season.
The 10th longest home run of the 2025 Cincinnati Reds season came on June 21st and came off of the bat of shortstop Elly De La Cruz. The home run came in the 7th inning and from the right side of the plate for the switch hitter.
The Video
The Metrics Behind The Blast
Elly De La Cruz was 1-3 with a triple in the game before this at-bat. 30 seconds earlier the Reds had tied the game up on an RBI groundout by Gavin Lux. Cincinnati’s infielder took the first pitch he saw and crushed it to the seats 435 feet from the plate.
Distance Metrics
Distance: 435 Feet
Reds Ranks: 10th
Major League Baseball Rank: 301st (tied)
Elly De La Cruz Rank: 6
Other Metrics
Launch Angle: 24°
Exit Velocity: 107.8 MPH
Bat Speed: 76.4 MPH
Reds Exit Velocity Rank (home runs only): 24th (out of 167)
Reds Bat Speed Rank (home runs only): 34 (of 157)
MLB Exit Velocity Rank (home runs only): 1304th (out of 5544)
MLB Bat Speed Rank (home runs only): 1942 (out of 5288)
The Story Behind The Blast
Cincinnati had just tied the game up. Matt McLain, who had a ground-rule double earlier in the inning was standing on third base with two outs in the top of the 7th inning. Elly De La Cruz had been slumping over the previous four days, going 1-14 before the game against the Cardinals on this day.
He had tripled off of Sonny Gray earlier in the day, but he was going to face a left-handed pitcher for the first time in the game and after Steven Matz had tossed a shutout 6th he ran into some problems in the 7th and his problems didn’t stop when he turned around De La Cruz. Matz fired off a first pitch change up and then he turned around and watched it fly deep into the seats in center as he not only blew the lead earlier in the inning but then watched him give up the go-ahead runs, too.
This game started a strong run through the end of June for De La Cruz, who hit .405/.450/.703 in the final nine games of the month. During that stretch he had a double, two triples, two home runs, nine runs scored, and seven runs batted in.
Unfortunately this game didn’t turn out so well for Cincinnati. While they would tack on another run on a Will Benson sacrifice fly in the 8th to take a 5-2 lead, the Cardinals stormed back and scored runs off of Tony Santillan, Emilio Pagan, and Chase Petty as they would pick up a walk-off win in the bottom of the 11th.
You can follow along the entire series here.
