Elly De La Cruz hits for the cycle, leads Reds past Braves to historic 12th straight win

The Cincinnati Reds can’t be stopped.

Elly De La Cruz led the Reds to their 12th straight win on Friday night, a SCORE victory over the Atlanta Braves at the Great American Ball Park. De La Cruz hit for the cycle by the sixth inning, which only added to the historic day.

The Reds' 12th consecutive win matched a franchise best, a record that was last set in 1957.

De La Cruz was only playing in his 15th major league game on Friday night after being called up earlier this month from the Reds’ Triple-A affiliate in Louisville. The 21-year-old hit a two-run home run in the third inning off of Atlanta pitcher AJ Smith-Shawver, which brought the Reds back within just a single run at the time.

That marked De La Cruz' third home run since being called up. According to ESPN, he is now the first player in the World Series Era to have at least 20 hits, five stolen bases and three home runs in his first 15 games.

The home run followed a double that De La Cruz hit in the second inning, and brought him halfway to the cycle just three innings into the game. He hit an RBI single in the fifth inning, and was later hit in on a Joey Votto home run that suddenly gave the Reds their first lead of the game.

Then in the sixth inning, De La Cruz stretched a deep shot to right field into a triple to officially complete the cycle.

It was the first cycle by any Reds player since 1989, when Eric Davis did so against the San Diego Padres, and just the seventh in franchise history.

De La Cruz is now the third-fastest to a cycle in Major League Baseball history, too. Only Gary Ward, who did so in 14 games in 1980, and Cliff Heathcote, who got it in six in 1918, accomplished the feat faster. He's also the youngest to hit for a cycle since 1972.

Though De La Cruz was caught stealing home that inning, it didn’t matter. He had already made history and stretched Cincinnati’s lead to four runs. While the Braves hit three solo homers in the eighth inning to bring them back within one, the Reds held on to take the one-run win.

The Braves were on a run entering Friday’s game, the first of three against the Reds in Cincinnati. Atlanta had won eight straight games before Friday’s loss and 16 of its last 19. The Braves held a 6.5 game lead over the Miami Marlins in the NL East coming into Friday’s game, too.

The Reds are an incredible 13-2 since De La Cruz was called up on June 7 and hold the lead in the NL Central. They haven’t won their division since 2012, and have only seen the postseason once in the past decade.

While De La Cruz is only part of the reason why the Reds are on this historic run, he’s more than doing his part to keep it going.