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It’s hard to say that someone is the worst at something when there are only a few dozen people in the entire world who can do it. It’s like saying someone’s a bad astronaut. When you’re bad among that population, you’re still exceptional. But when you do it in front of tens of thousands of people at a time, and there are winners and losers each time you do it, it’s hard not to notice. Switch-hitting is one of those things, maybe more than anything in sports. And there’s a case to be made that Elly De La Cruz has been the worst switch-hitter in baseball since he entered the league.
Despite the highlight reel plays and deafening skills, his career DRC+ is only 105 in more than 2,000 plate appearances. That’s a nice player but not one you’d expect to hear bandied about as one of the very best in the league. Before thinking any more about his production, think about how the average switch-hitter performs. Against righties, they slashed .241/.318/.402. Turned around against lefties, they improved to a .259/.322/.424 line. Those numbers account for anyone who logged 500 plate appearances against righties and at least 200 against lefties between 2023 and 2025. The loose parameters give a sense of how rare it is, generally speaking, and also how much utility such a player might have. It’s not that they’re a force at the plate, per se, but rather, it’s a matter of better roster function. It’s easier to keep that guy in there when the bench spot that would spot them can spot someone else.
You see the gains there that switch-hitters have had when hitting against left-handed hitters. Now you can think about De La Cruz’s production again, starting with this:
