The only Cincinnati Reds to ever steal three bases in one inning.
Elly - De La Cruz, that is - may be hitting .328 in the first 29 games of his career, but even so he's proving the uselessness of batting average as a statistic in comparison to Civil War-era metrics. Why should Elly ever have to compare his batting average to players who get to 1st base and stop there (like a certain Miami Marlins infielder)?
Instead, Elly (and every other player) should be judged by his runs produced and hands lost--err, outs made. How many runs did he create for the Reds yesterday? Well, he scored two. How many outs did he make? Well, he had two hits in five at-bats, so probably three. It can't possibly be that simple, can it? Let's find out.
In the 1st inning, Elly De La Cruz forced Jonathan India at 2nd. Since it was a forceout, Elly's share of the out is equal to the percentage of times this play type (groundball non-hit, two outs, runner on 1st) results in at least one out: 97.5% in 2022.
In the 4th, with the Reds trailing 4-1, De La Cruz led off with a single and an error, went to 3rd on a balk, and scored on Joey Votto's game-tying 3-run homer. He earned three of his four bases here and therefore three-fourths of his run, one fourth with his batting and one half with his baserunning.
In the 5th, down 5-4, De La Cruz struck out, but Matt McLain stole 2nd on the play and then scored on Jake Fraley's double. The runner averaged .048 bases when batters struck out with a runner on 1st and one out in 2022. Elly deserves credit for that .048 of McLain's base and therefore .012 of his run.
And then in the 7th, still tied at 5-5, Elly singled home the winning run in TJ Friedl, then stole 2nd, stole 3rd, and stole home. That's five bases and 1.25 Runs: .5 batting Runs for getting Friedl home from 3rd and himself to 1st, and .75 baserunning Runs for the three stolen bases.
By the old ways, Elly only made two outs yesterday - he struck out and lined out. His first at-bat resulted in Jonathan India being put out, not him. But since India was forced out, and it was Elly’s groundball that forced him, I determined Elly gets the blame for almost all of that out - about 97% of it.
With a single and three stolen bases in the 7th inning, Elly got all the way around the bases and created a whole run on the power of his own dynamite bat and legs. His 4th-inning single and accompanying baserunning feats/fielding errors only got him to 3rd before Votto homered; however, he also drove in a runner from 3rd with the 7th-inning single. So he created two runs exactly (actually 2.01 because I give him .01 of McLain's 5th-inning run for the strikeout/stolen base).
By the most simple reckoning Elly scored two runs and made three outs. The in-depth method says he ACTUALLY created 2.01 Runs and 2.97 Outs. And unlike batting average, these numbers actually have meaning; if an entire team plays at Elly’s level last night for nine innings, they score 18 runs: 2 runs per 3 outs, times nine innings.
1.25 of Elly's 2.01 Runs yesterday were baserunning Runs. Last year, Albert Pujols created 0.98 baserunning Runs all year (351 plate appearances).
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