Phillies<\/a>, beat out an infield single an inning later, and he was aggressive on a fly down the line in left field Aug. 15, all suggesting he might feel closer to full strength.<\/p>\nThe league\u2019s reigning stolen base champ has only two steal attempts this month and just six since the All-Star break (all successful). He leads the team with 19 home runs but has only one since June 23.\u00a0<\/p>\n
De La Cruz is 17-for-75 (.227) in his last 18 games (through Aug. 15), with the July 31 home run, two doubles and three steal attempts.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s done a good job managing it,\u201d Francona said of the two-time All-Star who insists on trying to play every day and hasn\u2019t missed a game this season.<\/p>\n
The Reds can use every bit of their shortstop\u2019s dynamic offensive skillset as they face MLB\u2019s toughest schedule down the stretch clinging to the edges of the NL playoff picture.<\/p>\n
One factor within that remaining schedule might work in his and the team\u2019s favor: They have five scheduled days off over the final 39 days of the season, with only one stretch of more than six games in a row (10 games Sept. 12-21).<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an especially welcome pattern for a team that wound up with an unscheduled stretch of 20 straight days on the field, thanks to the Speedway Classic rain-delayed fiasco in Bristol, Tennessee, two weeks ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt should help,\u201d Francona said. \u201cFor a number of things. One, your bullpen. And you\u2019re able to give your starters hopefully an extra day.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said it\u2019s less of an issue for position players more accustomed to the everyday routine.<\/p>\n
But certainly it should help anybody, like De La Cruz, dealing with extra aches and issues.<\/p>\n
The Reds went 11-8 during that 20-day stretch (the Speedway Classic taking two days to complete).<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wasn\u2019t just the 20 days in a row,\u201d Francona said. \u201cThat was a long couple of days there (when rain washed out their scheduled departure from Bristol). I thought that took a little bit of a toll.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nick Martinez, Reds can’t hold 7-run lead vs. Brewers who win 13th straight Cincinnati Reds starter Nick Martinez…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":151508,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[591,20417,1582,276,10891,10595,5048,3189,10615,5821,10614,6367,17745,2961,224,5337,6375,4247,1266,61637,1571,5382,942,50,15746,19897,450,950,1311,2083,20414,1425,10596,3190,62,1458,17744,6373],"class_list":{"0":"post-151507","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-brewers","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-california","12":"tag-central","13":"tag-cincinnati","14":"tag-cincinnati-reds","15":"tag-content","16":"tag-cruz","17":"tag-de","18":"tag-elly","19":"tag-elly-de-la-cruz","20":"tag-francona","21":"tag-la","22":"tag-los-angeles","23":"tag-losangeles","24":"tag-milwaukee","25":"tag-milwaukee-brewers","26":"tag-mlb","27":"tag-mlb-playoffs","28":"tag-national","29":"tag-national-sports","30":"tag-neutral","31":"tag-news","32":"tag-oh","33":"tag-oh-content-sharing-reds-central","34":"tag-overall","35":"tag-overall-neutral","36":"tag-philadelphia","37":"tag-philadelphia-phillies","38":"tag-phillies","39":"tag-playoffs","40":"tag-reds","41":"tag-sharing","42":"tag-sports","43":"tag-sports-news","44":"tag-terry","45":"tag-terry-francona"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151507\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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