The talent just oozes off Elly De La Cruz, doesn’t it? He’s impossibly fast, and he throws the ball impossibly hard, and you just can’t look away from him anytime he’s on the field. There is no routine play that involves De La Cruz, because just about everything he does is eye-popping.
God, it’s fucking annoying.
Don’t get me wrong here: when the Reds are playing any team other than the Giants, he is delightful and I am all for him. Watching someone with De La Cruz’s electrifying talent is the whole reason baseball is fun: You see him hit a routine ground ball, mentally chalk it up as an out, and then suddenly JD Davis is throwing the ball as hard as humanly possible to beat him by a fiftieth of a step.
But I don’t want to worry about that when I’m watching a Giants game. I want the Giants to get the out and I want to know that they’ll get the out, so I can worry about them getting the next out. Now, I’m worrying about an out that should be a fait accompli. What the hell? Who allowed this?
It is fun to watch the Pirates or the Cubs or the Phillies or whoever deal with The Fastest Dude In The World Who Can Also Hit. It is downright delightful to watch the Dodgers deal with him. But it’s extremely stressful to watch the Giants deal with him. And I don’t care for stress. I want the Giants to win every game 19-0, and Elly De La Cruz, through his incredible talent and uncanny propensity for creating excitement, makes that much less likely.
Look, is it good for baseball to have a young, rising star who’s leading the turnaround of a moribund team by creating must-watch highlights seemingly every game? Of course it is. Is De La Cruz exactly the kind of player around whom MLB will be able to build years of marketing campaigns? Yes, 100%. Would I be awed by his many incredible gifts if I were seeing him in person? I wholeheartedly believe so. But do I dread the inevitable at-bat in which he does something incredibly cool that embarrasses my favorite team? My friends, you know I do.
Even in last night’s suspended game, in which he only made contact once, De La Cruz still made his presence felt. Not only did he, as previously mentioned, come within a hair’s breadth of beating out that routine grounder, but he also made every play at third base, including ones that were incredibly difficult and, by all rights, should not have been made. This professional baseball player was too good at baseball and I don’t care for it!
Did you see his glovework? His footwork? His arm? His arm isn’t a howitzer because howitzers are too slow. We all oohed and aahed over Casey Schmitt’s arm earlier this year, and Elly De La Cruz puts him to shame as a matter of course. A person is simply not meant to be good at as many things as De La Cruz is good at. And here he is, showing off all of those skills against the Giants, who seemed like they would have several rookies who, after bursting onto the scene, would stay burst onto the scene, and instead are clinging on to Patrick Bailey for dear life.
(Bailey has a 28.7% strikeout rate and a 3% walk rate. De La Cruz, meanwhile, has a 30.7% strikeout rate and a 5.3% walk rate. Maybe they’re pretty similar after all!)
I know I’m coming off like I’m anti-De La Cruz and anti-fun, but I want to be clear: I am only anti-those things when those things negatively impact the Giants. And do you know why? Well, yes, because I have now written about it for several hundred words, but do you know the worst part? When you have to grudgingly appreciate him. When you have to admit to yourself and the world that yes, it was actually cool when that guy clowned your team. When you have to tell people, you saw that, and you watched it several times even though you did not enjoy it live at all. When you one day reminisce about the cool thing that happened that made you feel bad.
I don’t want to do that. I think the Giants should keep De La Cruz from reaching base at all in this series. I think they should strike him out in most of his at bats, and not hit the ball near him. And for God’s sake, do not let this man influence the series in any way, or else we’ll all remember his greatness at the expense of our favorite team forever.
God, this is all gonna be a million times worse when the Dodgers sign Ohtani next year.