Grand slam from Elly De La Cruz is the Reds play of the week!

Meanwhile, Hunter Greene stakes his claim to the National League Cy Young Award.

A grand slam to lead your team to victory…on your bobblehead night?!

Just when you thought you’d seen everything from Cincinnati Reds star Elly De La Cruz, he hit you with just that.

In the Bottom of the 3rd inning during Saturday’s contest against the Pittsburgh Pirates, Elly fought his way to a full count against veteran lefty Andrew Heaney. And when Heaney tried to beat him with a high fastball, well, Elly launched a casual four-run tater over the wall in left field.

That gave the Reds a 4-0 lead in Andrew Abbott’s return to the big league mound, and the Reds made that hold up in an eventual 5-2 victory.

That’s good enough for this week’s Joe Nuxhall Memorial Honorary Play of the Week, an award that only gets brought out on the odd occasion when there’s one play that jumps to the top of the weekly pile.

As for the Joe Nuxhall Memorial Honorary Star of the Week, well, that’s pretty clearly going to Hunter Greene.

On the heels of his brilliant almost-complete game on Monday in San Francisco where he fired 8.2 IP of scoreless ball, Greene simply dismantled the hapless Pirates in Sunday’s series finale in GABP, too. His 98 pitch outing featured 7.0 IP of 2 H, BB, 0 ER ball, with 8 punchouts on the card – in the process, he lowered his season ERA down to a sparkling 0.98.

If it feels like Hunter’s been on a roll for a long time now, well…he absolutely has.

Oh, and that led the Reds in a 4-0 victory that wrapped up the series sweep of Pittsburgh and got the club back to .500 at 8-8.

Congrats to both Elly and Hunter!