Reds Call Up Elly De La Cruz: Top Prospect Rookie Of The Year Odds

Elly De La Cruz has officially been called up by the Cincinnati Reds. The top-five prospect in baseball has been dominating the minor leagues on the Triple-A Louisville Bats. He has put up numbers of .297/.398/.633 with 12 home runs and 36 RBI this season along with 11 stolen bases.

His performance has him sitting among the top-five choices for NL Rookie of the Year in MLB odds, despite not playing a single MLB game yet. Could now be the time to jump on Elly De La Cruz ROTY odds, and could he actually catch the favorite, Corbin Carroll?

NL Rookie of the Year Odds

The table below shows the best available price for each player to win the award at sportsbooks in your state. Click on the odds to bet now.

Elly De La Cruz Player Props

Cincinnati Reds Welcome Elly De La Cruz

The team took to Twitter to make the announcement. Cincinnati signed De La Cruz back in 2018 from the Dominican Republic. He is a top prospect that is expected to make an immediate impact on the team.

Sportsbooks recognize this, as at multiple books De La Cruz sits amongst top-four shortest odds to win ROTY. As of Tuesday afternoon, he was +1600 at DraftKings Sportsbook and quickly shortened to +1000. The players with shorter odds had all been playing in the big leagues already. This includes Arizona’s Corbin Carroll (+100), the Los Angeles Dodgers’ James Outman (+700), and the New York Mets’ Francisco Alvarez (+700).

If De La Cruz lives up to expectations, then taking his ROTY MLB betting odds now is the best move. De La Cruz’s odds are only expected to shorten as the season progresses if he plays as well as most expect. His best available price right now is .

Can He Win?

Despite other rookies having dozens of games to amass stats before De La Cruz’s first at bat, there is a chance he can win the award. The hype surrounding De La Cruz is not random. He is a top prospect, sitting at 6’5″ and over 200 pounds. In April alone, De La Cruz managed numbers of 347/.460/.743, 10 home runs, and 28 RBI. He has a hit in 14 of his last 15 games.

Should he maintain this level of performance, De La Cruz could theoretically catch Carroll in the eyes of some voters.

“Video-game like, sometimes,” said Vince Harrison Louisville assistant coach to Olivia Ray of WLWT NBC 5. “Dude’s 21 years old — like, that’s not normal. He comes up his next at-bat left-handed and hits a homer, and then his next at-bat he’s hitting right-handed and hits a homer 430 feet and you’re like ‘that’s what I do in the video game. This dude did it in real life.”

Here’s the problem, the NL ROTY favorite has not only been good for a rookie. He’s been MVP-candidate good. Carroll sits sixth in the NL in offensive WAR, according to FanGraphs. That’s going to be very hard for De La Cruz to catch, unless Carroll suffers an injury or goes into a massive slump.

He’ll have almost four months to do it, after sitting the minors for the first two months of the season.

Cincinnati Reds Props