Gunnar Henderson and Elly De La Cruz Are the Most Exciting Trade Chips This Winter

Gunnar Henderson and Elly De La Cruz are this offseason’s most interesting trade chips.

Free agency at shortstop is thin.

Mauricio Dubón and J.P. Crawford are the best available at the position.

Both are useful players.

Neither is a building block.

Any team with a shortstop-sized hole on its roster would be wiser to peruse the trade market.

That market features two young players with immense talent but without long-term contracts.

Gunnar Henderson of the Orioles.

And Elly De La Cruz of the Reds.

Let’s begin with Henderson.

The onetime wunderkind put up 7.9 WAR and a 154 wRC+ as a 23-year-old in 2024.

That season included a .281 batting average, 21 stolen bases, and a fourth-place MVP finish.

It serves as a reminder of what he is capable of.

But a quick check of both his traditional stats and the peripherals shows that he has not been the same hitter since.

Part of that, as Henderson revealed after this season, has been the result of shoulder and wrist injuries.

Diving for a ball in 2025 caused a shoulder impingement that Henderson said negatively influenced his bat plane.

He spent half of 2026 playing with a barking wrist.

Davy Andrews covered Henderson’s ailments in depth at the beginning of October.

A fully healed Henderson could certainly bounce back in 2027.

But as he tried to grit his way through the last two campaigns, his performance has not been commensurate with that of a superstar player.

In the two seasons since his peak, the home run totals have sagged from 37 to 17 and 24, respectively.

His collective slugging percentage is over 100 points lower, going from .529 in 2024 to a lethargic .420 across 2025 and 2026.

However you slice the advanced numbers, they’re unappetizing.

By wRC+, wOBA, xwOBA, xSLG — and perhaps most indicative of physical troubles, average exit velocity, hard-hit rate, and barrel rate — Henderson has taken a noticeable step back.

So too has his ballclub.

Baltimore finished below .500 for the second straight year.

Now to De La Cruz.

The 24-year-old shortstop delivered a career-best season in 2026.

He batted .283 with 30 home runs, 30 doubles, 30 stolen bases and an .880 OPS.

He posted roughly 6.4 WAR.

His combination of power, speed and athleticism has made him one of the most dynamic young position players in baseball.

Yet the club around him fell well short of expectations and finished outside the postseason race.

Chris Landers of FanSided sees a realistic scenario in which Cincinnati at least listens to offers on its franchise player this winter.

The Reds’ lineup still has clear holes.

Ownership has shown little willingness to open the checkbook.

Earlier extension discussions appear to have stalled after De La Cruz turned down a deal that would have surpassed Joey Votto’s previous club-record contract.

In that environment, trading the shortstop for a transformative package of young talent is not an outlandish idea on paper.

At the same time, Landers notes that the Reds hold the leverage.

De La Cruz remains under team control for three more seasons before free agency.

Without an extraordinary return, Cincinnati can simply keep him and reassess later.

That three-year runway is the central reason any deal remains unlikely.

De La Cruz is entering his first arbitration year and will not reach the open market until after the 2029 season.

Small-market clubs rarely surrender that kind of cost-controlled production unless the incoming talent is overwhelming.

Reports have already linked him to clubs such as the Dodgers and Red Sox.

Former executives have suggested the Reds would at least field calls.

Still, the asking price would have to resemble the historic packages that have moved other pre-free-agency stars, not a conventional collection of mid-tier prospects.

For now, the most probable outcome is that De La Cruz opens 2027 in a Reds uniform.

Cincinnati’s front office can continue shopping for complementary pieces while waiting to see whether a true blockbuster emerges.

If no such offer appears, the club retains one of the sport’s most exciting players at a fraction of the price he would command on the open market.

Only a return that fundamentally resets the organization is likely to change that calculation.

Sports Illustrated’s take is similar.

Why rush, the outlet asks.

The Reds currently control De La Cruz until 2030.

If the Reds do decide to move on from Elly, why not wait until at least 2029, see where they stand competitively, and get the most out of him while he’s in their uniform?

Simply put, if the Reds want any chance of being a winning team in 2027, they will need Elly to be on their roster.