The Road Map to Improvement At Bat for Chicago Cubs' Pete Crow-Armstrong

[Brian Kelder]

We've seen (more or less) the full force and value of the Cubs' young center fielder's speed and defense already. What has to happen, though, for his bat to round out the profile?

Image courtesy of © Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images

Pete Crow-Armstrong is aggressive. He's incredibly aggressive chasing fly balls. The dirt on many infields is churned due to his spikes. What serves him so well in other areas of the game, however, can shoot him in the foot when he's at the plate.

Extremely aggressive at the plate, Crow-Armstrong hasn't yet showed the ability to make good swing decisions against the best pitchers in the world:

• O-Swing: 40.4% (28% is the league average). On roughly four of every 10 pitches outside the strike zone, Crow-Armstrong is swinging away.
• Z-Swing: 75% (67% league average): Unsurprisingly, Crow-Armstrong also loves to swing at pitches that are actually in the strike zone.
• Total Swinging Strike Rate: 18.4% (league average, 12%).

When he's going well (as he was for much of the second half), Crow-Armstrong's athleticism and ability to attack the ball make up for whatever sins of sloppiness he commits with his approach. He batted .263/.315/.480 in July and August, with a strikeout rate of just over 16%. Even then, though, you see the drag on his OBP from all that swinging. Over the long season, it also interfered with him getting to his power.

Let's summarize what happened last year with his hard contact rate, without crashing into a tsunami of numbers. Baseball Savant said he was below average in exit velocity, barrels, hard-hit percentage, launch-angle sweet spot percentage, and the squared-up metric (i.e., how squarely his bat met the ball, thus allowing his exit velocity to be an efficient reflection of his swing speed. Swinging at suboptimal pitches and making contact on them can lead to suboptimal results at the plate. Crow-Armstrong's aggressiveness could be tempered by better pitch recognition. 

His stats against breaking balls (.191 AVG, .391 SLG) indicate that the pitch recognition aspect is where he can improve the most. Against fastballs, by contrast, the slugging was worse, but he did raise the batting average to an above-league average of .256 (bolstered by sinkers, which were .283; on four-seam fastballs, he batted .202). One can posit that better pitch recognition would lead to a higher contact rate and better contact on the pitches swung at.

If you cut Crow-Armstrong's strikeout rate by five percentage points relative to last year, he would add about 30 balls in play over 600 plate appearances. If you assume the BABIP doesn't change, the slash line will go from .237/.286/.384 to .255/.305/.400. That would probably be good for a wRC+ over 100, resulting in a WAR somewhere over 4 (when coupled with his elite defense and baserunning). It's an imperfect science, however. Swing adjustments can come with unintended consequences. Launch angle could be affected, ground-ball rate could spike, and any number of things could change the outcomes. Suffice it to say that pitch recognition and better swing decisions would benefit Crow-Armstrong, probably even more than they would help most players.

Wrigley Field playing to normal levels of offense would also be a boon. Check out these splits:

Home Games (Wrigley Field):

• Batting Average (AVG): .202
• On-Base Percentage (OBP): .247
• Slugging Percentage (SLG): .321
• OPS: .569
• Hits: 34 in 168 at-bats
• Home Runs (HR): 3
• Runs Batted In (RBI): 15
• Stolen Bases (SB): 12

Away Games:

• Batting Average (AVG): .265
• On-Base Percentage (OBP): .317
• Slugging Percentage (SLG): .436
• OPS: .753
• Hits: 54 in 204 at-bats
• Home Runs (HR): 7
• Runs Batted In (RBI): 32
• Stolen Bases (SB): 15

Maybe Wrigley Field won't be the pitcher's park, and the center fielder's stats will be at his road levels for 2025. 

Crow-Armstrong might be able to make adjustments, or he might not. He's the most exciting player on the Cubs because of his defense and speed around the bases. The hitting would take him from a fun player to a possible star to build around.

At this point, I'm projecting the sophomore to slash .240/.295/.380, with around 15 home runs and 40 stolen bases, right in line with Steamer and the new projection system on FanGraphs called (hilariously) OOPSY. Nobody wants him to change who he is. Maybe just be himself less often? Regardless, Crow-Armstrong's development at the plate is a major storyline that will help define the Cubs and their future.

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