Photo: Doug Gray
Earlier in the offseason the Dominican Republic began announcing players that would be on their World Baseball Classic team. Among those players announced was Cincinnati Reds shortstop Elly De La Cruz. That announcement was later retracted/deleted from social media. Earlier in the offseason than that it was announced that he would participate in a home run derby in Miami as a part of Vladimir Guerrero Jr’s fundraising event that took place in early December. De La Cruz was later scratched from that event, too (Noelvi Marte replaced him in the event and won). Late on Friday night it was confirmed that De La Cruz would not be playing in the World Baseball Classic this year, with Reds.com’s Mark Sheldon noting the decision was made in conjunction with the Reds because he was coming off of the quad injury.
This all seems a bit much. In the 2025 baseball season Elly De La Cruz played in all 162 regular season games. He played in the All-Star game. And he played in both of the Reds playoff games. For more than half of those games the Cincinnati Reds knew he was dealing with a quad issue. And yet he continued to be written into the lineup every single day. The only days off he got were the team’s scheduled days off. Things were so “fine” in the mind of the club that they put him at DH one time in the second half of the season.
We don’t know if De La Cruz backed out of the home run derby in Miami because of his quad injury still not being 100% or not. But we are now at a point where he is not participating in the World Baseball Classic, five months after 2025’s season ended, because of an injury that the team didn’t even deem bad enough at the time to give him one single day off for.
Updated with new information
Sheldon has further reporting saying it was the Reds decision to keep him out of the World Baseball Classic and that he wanted to play.
About The Author
