Pete Crow-Armstrong Makes Plays You Can Dream On. It's Turning Into a Nightmare.

[Matthew Trueblood]

The Cubs got another glimpse of the energy and dynamism their rookie outfielder can bring to the lineup Wednesday night. They also got another eyeful of the mounting evidence that he's never going to be a playable regular.

Image courtesy of © Darren Yamashita-USA TODAY Sports

It was, all in all, a pretty good night at the plate for Pete Crow-Armstrong. He snuck a ground ball through the right side for a second-inning RBI single, and in the fourth, he drew a leadoff walk, then raced around to score on a single after taking off on a steal attempt with the pitch. Even in the sixth inning, when he flew out, he put a fairly good swing on the ball. To be a viable regular, he will need to lift the ball with some authority more often, and he hit that fly ball 95.6 miles per hour off the bat.

Alas, in the ninth, Crow-Armstrong struck out looking in a pretty non-competitive at-bat against Giants closer Camilo Doval, helping ensure that the Cubs' rally went for naught. That's been too familiar a sight all season--well, except for the "looking" part.

By no means does Crow-Armstrong need to be a full-fledged star by now, with an above-average OPS. Growing pains were expected, even and especially as he's gotten more playing time over the last few weeks. The truly discouraging thing is that he's getting worse, rather than better, and that the cause of that struggle is a seemingly desperate aggressiveness that disqualifies any player from finding success.

In April and May, Crow-Armstrong swung at just over 58% of the pitches he saw. That's too much; it makes it almost impossible to be a consistent big-league hitter. Not only does swinging that much beget too many strikeouts and too few walks, but by failing to be selective within the zone, it neuters a hitter's power. In June, in nearly the same amount of playing time as he had in the first two months combined, you know what Crow-Armstrong's swing rate is? It's 63.8%. SIXTY-THREE POINT EIGHT. That's insane, and indefensible. That's a player completely without a plan.

I frequently compare Crow-Armstrong to Corey Patterson, a tooled-up but swing-happy center fielder who had an even higher prospect pedigree but ended up settling in as a fourth outfielder. In his Cubs tenure, the only month in which Patterson swung that much was August 2002. In Javier Báez's entire big-league career, he's never had a month where he swung 63% of the time. If Crow-Armstrong were making it all work anyway, we would still have to say that this feral approach is a bad idea. Maybe his two triples this week and last night's showing have given you some reason to imagine that he is making it work, to some extent. On the screen, he looks erratic but dangerous, and very exciting.

Nope. He's batting .161/.203/.232 this month. You'd be better off sending up Kerry Wood (a .171/.196/.249 career hitter) than giving that playing time to the Cubs' center fielder right now. Crow-Armstrong doesn't even look like Patterson. He looks like a highly talented player in urgent danger of becoming unusable even as a bench asset, let alone as an everyday outfielder. He's swinging less often when counts reach two strikes, by no small margin, which is the opposite of the approach you want to see from a player who has yet to demonstrate any real plate discipline. He's just trying not to strike out, and even that isn't working.

This isn't a call for Crow-Armstrong to be sent to the minors. The Cubs need the information about him they're gleaning from playing him fairly regularly of late. If he can't make a massive adjustment, though, they will eventually have to send him back to Iowa for another reset. There's a play roughly every other game on which Crow-Armstrong looks like one of the best and most electrifying players in MLB. Most of the time, though, he doesn't look like he even belongs on the same field as his teammates. That has to change, and soon.

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