It’s not the one they’ve been using. At least, it hasn’t been.
I worried when the 2025 Cincinnati Reds season began that they may well be asking too much of a 23 year old Elly De La Cruz already.
Yeah, Elly’s a star. He showed up early and often in 2024, posted a 119 OPS+ season in which he led all MLB in steals and socked a team-leading 25 homers. He was destined to be a big, big part of the 2025 Reds offense in a major way, sure, but I still wondered if they’d have been better suited finding a sturdy buttress for the lineup who, in theory, would help take pressure off Elly if he ever sputtered for a time.
Elly has been, perhaps, the most perpetually consistent portion of this wildly inconsistent Reds offense so far. The power’s not showing up just yet, but he’s getting on-base at a better clip than ever and, most importantly, has been playing every single day.
As it turns out, the worries I had about how the Reds would be asking too much of Elly are now manifesting themselves with Matt McLain, instead.
McLain missed half of 2023, all of 2024, and has already had an IL stint during the 2025 season as well. He’s hitting just .165/.183/.298 (61 OPS+) for the season and has ‘slugged’ just .188 in 82 PA since returning from his IL stint. Still, manager Terry Francona has continued to show immense faith in the once-burgeoning star, keeping him as his everyday 2-hole hitter (except for a pair of games where he led off when TJ Friedl got a day).
McLain’s struggles are not the entirety of the Reds struggles. They’ve been without other key pieces like Tyler Stephenson, Austin Hays, and Christian Encarnacion-Strand for much of the season, too, while Jeimer Candelario is positively decrepit. Spencer Steer can’t play the field the way he once could, further complicating the rotation around the field to backfill, and the team’s two best hitters early on were catchers who couldn’t both play at the same time.
Still, it’s hard not to see the Reds ranking dead last in all of baseball in offensive production from the #2 spot in their lineup so far and not wonder if it’s time to shake up the team’s lineup just a little, with McLain getting put in a position that’s slightly less ‘key’ for the time being.
(That’s not an exaggeration. Their 62 wRC+ from the #2 spot in the lineup is worst in all of baseball, while the 2 dingers they’ve gotten there are the worst from any team other than the Colorado Rockies, who I’m increasingly convinced don’t even exist.)
The Reds aren’t going to option McLain, nor are they going to sit him. They aren’t going to move him off 2B for even Gavin Lux, Matt’s defense being far too valuable there. What they probably should do at this juncture, though, is drop him down in the order a bit and see if that’s the kind of thing that could help him settle back into his offense just a bit.