Coronation: Pete Crow-Armstrong Wins 2026 National League MVP Award

"No one, it becomes clear, can conquer this impossible and unpredictable game," Roger Angell once wrote of baseball. "Yet every player tries, and now and again—very rarely—we see a man who seems to have met all the demands, challenged all the implacable averages, spurned the mere luck. He has defied baseball, even altered it, and for a time at least the game is truly his."

That's the kind of season Pete Crow-Armstrong had in 2026. He ensorcelled a game that bedevils even its greatest practitioners. He broke the mustang that is baseball until it settled into a companionable canter at his side. For as long as any player since the full professionalization and integration of the game has ever done so, he simply seemed to have the game solved. Like a streak, he shot across the outfield, mocking the men who have tried and failed to build truly deterrent systems for intercepting ballistic missiles by making that job look fairly trivial, with a target much smaller than a missile and no computer more advanced than his brain. 

At the plate, he slashed through the ball with a ferocity just controlled enough to direct much of the resulting contact to the pull field, where he found plenty of bleacher seats and plenty of gaps in the opponents' defense. His dramatic improvement in plate discipline rounded him out as an offensive weapon, making him one of the top hitters in the league. Once he reached base, he made the game look even more solved. His reads were brilliant. His slides were angry. He forced mistakes and exulted in each base they gained him. 

No one was safe. Brewers closer Trevor Megill gave up only one home run all year; it was to Crow-Armstrong. Cy Young Award winner Jacob Misiorowski only allowed one contested straight steal; it was to Crow-Armstrong. He finished with 45 homers and 41 steals. He became the fourth player ever to amass 80 or more extra-base hits, 80 or more walks and 40 or more stolen bases in one campaign, joining Carlos Beltrán (2004), Ronald Acuña Jr. (2023), and Shohei Ohtani (2024). He also became the avatar of the Cubs. It was a non-stop show. His speed, power and passion made him loom larger over every game than any player in recent memory. Even Ohtani only had one offensive season to match this one, and it came in one of the years when he didn't pitch (or, therefore, provide any defensive value).

Without Crow-Armstrong, the Cubs would have scarcely been a winning team, let alone a playoff qualifier. They weren't bad, but they were only good because of him. That he so transcended the game in the lead-in season for a six-year deal that now ranks among the most team-friendly in baseball (before it even begins) is just gravy. Though the Cubs didn't achieve what they aspired to this season, Crow-Armstrong made it the most memorable Chicago season since 2016, and one of the five most thrilling of the last 30 years. He altered baseball, and seized it. The game is wily; it's slippery. Even Crow-Armstrong will probably never own it quite the way he did this year ever again. That only makes it more important to savor the way he did so for a long, brilliant summer.

Since the end of the season, Crow-Armstrong has won Sports Info Solutions's Defensive Player of the Year Award, a Gold Glove in center field, a Platinum Glove, and the National League Hank Aaron Award. This culminating honor completes a collection of of them that will be hard for any player to match. It also means a $2.5-million windfall for Crow-Armstrong, via the new pre-arbitration bonus pool system. He's made an enormous amount of money this season, even if most of it is in endorsements and future earnings, even after gaining this bonus. The fans he's made (and made smile) are an even more hard-won reward, though.

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