Elly De La Cruz, Andrew Abbott to represent Reds in MLB Futures Game

If you’ve watched Elly De La Cruz in any capacity over the last two seasons, it’s impossible to imagine Major League Baseball putting on a showcase of top prospect talent without him involved. Elly provides that rare combination of power, speed, hitting ability, glove, and arm, and manages to do so from the middle of the infield despite having grown into a six-foot five-inch frame.

He’s electric, frankly, and his skills have translated into numbers so far this year for High-A Dayton in the Cincinnati Reds system. With 15 homers and 21 steals to his name through only 67 games played this year, he’ll now take his .910 OPS to the Futures Game, as the Reds announced earlier today.

(Some blogholio called that yesterday, for the record.)

Joining Elly will be lefty Andrew Abbott, who was the Reds 2nd rounder last summer out of UVA. And while he has sputtered a bit since his mid-year promotion to AA Chattanooga, his overall body of work this year paired with his elite ability to command the strike zone has seen him shoot up prospect rankings so far this year. He owns a 4.09 ERA and 1.22 WHIP through 72.2 IP this season, but it’s his 99/24 K/BB that has the lefty the apple of the Futures Game’s eye.

Congrats to both, who’ll suit up on July 16th for the 7 PM ET game in Dodger Stadium. The entire rosters are linked below.