Elly De La Cruz has done a great many loud things in a Reds uniform. Until Monday night, he had never ended a game with one. His first career walk-off hit came in the 10th inning and gave Cincinnati a 6-5 win over the St. Louis Cardinals, salvaging a split of a doubleheader that had been leaning the wrong way for most of the evening.
That is the whole story of the day, really. Two teams played twice, one team traded a win for a win, and the difference between a bad Monday and a fine one came down to two swings from the back half of the roster and the front of the marquee.
How the Reds got the Elly De La Cruz walk-off hit
Cincinnati was trailing going to the ninth. Dane Myers came off the bench and hit a tying pinch-hit homer, which is the rarest kind of bailout there is: a manager gets exactly one swing to fix a night, and it worked. That pushed the game to extras at 5-5, where De La Cruz delivered the hit that sent everybody home.
Pinch-hit homers in the ninth do not happen because a team planned them. They happen because somebody on the bench stayed ready through nine innings of a second game in one day, which is a genuinely hard thing to do and almost never gets written up as skill. It should be.
Why a first career walk-off matters for Elly De La Cruz
Here is the funny part. De La Cruz has been a nightly highlight since he arrived, all length and switch-hitting thunder and top-of-the-scale speed, and somehow the game had never handed him the at-bat that ends things. Walk-offs are not a talent stat. They are a scheduling accident. You need to be home, you need to be tied or down one, and you need the lineup card to spin your way in the right inning. Four seasons in, the spin finally landed.
checked the almanac: back in his rookie summer of 2023, de la cruz hit for the cycle, the first reds player to do it since eric davis in 1989. so the kid has been doing rare things for a while. this was just the common thing he had never done.
That is baseball's sense of humor in one line. The cycle came before the walk-off single.
What comes next for the Reds and Cardinals
The practical residue of a doubleheader is arms, and both clubs spent them. Cincinnati needed nine innings plus extras in the nightcap to get its half of the day, and the leverage relievers in that game were not available for free. St. Louis had the sweep of a two-game day sitting there in the ninth and watched it leave the yard. Splits feel neutral in a box score. They do not feel neutral at 11:30 at night in a visiting clubhouse.
The two run it back Tuesday at 6:41 ET in Cincinnati, same building, tireder pitching staffs, and a home team that just learned what its shortstop looks like when the dugout empties for him.
What I am watching next: whether Myers keeps drawing the late pinch-hit spot after cashing that one, how the Reds' bullpen carries the doubleheader mileage into the middle of this series, and whether De La Cruz treats a first walk-off the way most young stars do, which is to suddenly want another one immediately. Nobody who has ever been mobbed at home plate has been in a hurry to make it a one-time thing.