Projecting a Dodgers-Reds Elly De La Cruz trade package as fan fiction moves closer to reality

Just days after the Milwaukee Brewers won the first World Series in franchise history, Los Angeles Dodgers fans are probably ready for Andrew Friedman to get to work and start making his notorious offseason moves.

But with a looming lockout and a ton of uncertainty around the future, free agent signings may be held up for a while, leaving fans twiddling their thumbs. What might not get held up are trades — especially trades involving players who are still under team control where the future is more certain. Enter Cincinnati Reds superstar Elly De La Cruz.

Fans have been hearing rumblings for a while now, and this week brought new details about the Boston Red Sox making a "very strong offer" for De La Cruz ahead of the trade deadline, one Cincinnati turned down. But what The Athletic's Jim Bowden just dropped might light a fire under Friedman. Bowden joined D-Mac and Reiter on 97.1 The Fan and made it clear he believes the Reds would seriously consider moving their franchise player.

"Absolutely, I do," Bowden said. "For the Reds, what makes sense, like the Nationals with Wood and Abrams, they should be trying to sign these guys. But if you can't, don't let them get to free agency or a year from free agency. Trade them now while you can get a huge package and can get a competitive team."

Then he put Los Angeles squarely in the conversation. "This kind of trade makes sense for the Reds and the Dodgers," Bowden said. "The Dodgers need to be thinking about their next superstar player."

Why would the Reds trade Elly De La Cruz to the Dodgers in his prime?

Not to pour salt in the wound, but the Brewers just proved that small-market teams cannot only win a championship but build an entire organization designed to win. It's no industry secret how they did it, either. They were crafty and strategic, moving and acquiring players at the "proper" time in their team control years.

Proper can be very subjective here, hence the quotes, and that's the trick of the trade. A front office needs to know when to move a player as he gets closer to free agency, and when to pull the trigger on a young, budding superstar it controls for multiple years.

And while Scott Boras may be the Dodgers' enemy during the Tarik Skubal free agency battle, he may be their best friend when it comes to acquiring De La Cruz. Boras, who Bowden pointed out on air is De La Cruz's agent, is known for steering players of his caliber away from early team-friendly extensions so they can test free agency and keep pushing salaries higher.

De La Cruz has already followed that script. The Reds offered him the largest contract in franchise history during spring training in 2025, a deal bigger than Joey Votto's 10-year, $225 million extension, and he turned it down.

That's a problem for a club that finished with the 19th-highest payroll in baseball this season, at roughly $126 million, without a single player making more than $15 million. De La Cruz is entering his first year of arbitration, MLB Trade Rumors projects him to make $7.9 million in 2027, and that number is only going to go up.

His production explains why. De La Cruz hit .235 with 13 homers and 35 steals over 98 games as a rookie in 2023, then broke out in 2024 with 25 homers, an MLB-leading 67 steals, an .809 OPS, his first All-Star selection and an eighth-place MVP finish. He played all 162 games in 2025, earning another All-Star nod while gutting through a strained quad, and this season he took the leap, slashing .283/.365/.515 with career highs of 30 homers and a 142 OPS+ to join the 30-30 club and post 5.6 bWAR at 24 years old.

Seasons like that are what make arbitration so expensive. De La Cruz has three trips through the process before he reaches free agency after the 2029 season, and Just Baseball expects his salary to approach $30 million by the end of that run. For context, Juan Soto set the arbitration record at $31 million with the Yankees in 2024, and Skubal broke it last February when he won $32 million from the Tigers. Soto then turned his final year of control into a 15-year, $765 million deal at 26. De La Cruz would hit the open market at 27, and with Boras in his corner, it's hard to imagine him asking for anything less than a contract that dwarfs the one he already rejected.

So this is where Friedman works his wizardry, just as he did when he pried Skubal away from Detroit in August. The Dodgers have the No. 1 farm system in baseball, but the Reds would want cost-controlled talent that can help right away, so any deal likely starts with an established big leaguer like Andy Pages or someone early in his career like Justin Wrobleski or Alex Freeland.

From there, Friedman has two ways to build it. He could go top-heavy, pairing that big leaguer with a premium prospect like Josue De Paula and one more high-ceiling name, or he could go for volume, packaging five or six players like James Tibbs III, Eduardo Quintero and a fresh-start Bobby Miller so Cincinnati restocks several spots at once.

And as a Dodgers fan, if you needed another selling point — Elly rakes at Dodger Stadium (.309 with four homers and six steals in13 career games), including a 444-foot blast in September that was the longest home run hit there all season. Friedman and the Dodgers' front office are way smarter than me, so I'm confident they'll know the right buttons to press, but Dodgers fans should be tuning into this story and staying buckled up all offseason no matter what.

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