Can Pete Crow-Armstrong Lead The Cubs To The Promised Land (October)?

It’s fun to watch Pete Crow-Armstrong play baseball. Over the past month, his torrid performance has played a key role in lifting the Cubs from what seemed to be another Sell-By season into a legitimate rat race with the Mets and Braves for the final Wild Card slot. Slim as the Cubs' chances may look in Vegas, it bears remembering that Vegas aren’t the ones playing ball (at least for another few seasons), and the high-ceiling offense that has been frustratingly latent all season has finally—beautifully—come alive.

The Cubs have been hitting .268 with 123 wRC+ as a team since the start of August, and they are good for second in the majors behind the Diamondbacks. In that time, Crow-Armstrong has generated 1.7 WAR, second for the Cubs behind a surging Dansby Swanson (1.8 since August 1st), and cleared the deck with a whopping 161 wRC+ over that span. His dynamic defense, explosive baserunning (you can watch his season record 14.08-second inside the parker for the 9,000th time here), and adept, powerful bat were always there; the latter just needed a few months at the mercy of major-league pitching before PCA could adjust accordingly and do what he has done at all previous levels of the game: absolutely rake. He’s hitting .330/.386/.560 since August 1st and shows no signs of slowing down, with three singles and two runs (thanks to more aggressive baserunning) in Sunday’s sweep-sealing rout of the Nats.

Of course, the league will adapt to PCA’s rapidly maturing hit tool. We can expect his numbers to take a dive again before he settles into a standard production level. Still, even if he ends up a career .250 hitter (which hardly seems likely at this rate), he’ll be one of the most valuable outfielders in the majors, thanks to his defensive presence. 

Much has been written of PCA’s plus-plus defensive capabilities, and rightly so. Particularly remarkable are his routes to the ball and the light, fine-tuning steps he takes as he approaches the balls that come his way. His speed allows him to “burst” with elite effectiveness, getting into the area of the catch quickly and giving himself more time to adjust—which he does with the relish and flash of a guy who just plain loves catching the ball. 

He approaches assist chances with the same mixture of aggression and savvy; with a runner on first and this dying quail all but certain to drop in for a base hit, Crow-Armstrong refuses to concede the single until the last possible instant, adjusting his dive to field the ball on a short hop and keep Isiah Kiner-Falefa on second base.  Oh, and the kid absolutely hauls the ball back in whenever it gets out there to him with runners on base, no matter how far down the basepaths they already are. This type of heart and effort is precisely what the promising-on-paper Cubs lineup has needed to get sparks flying up and down the batting order.

As long as he doesn’t follow in his inspiration’s footsteps and let his confidence eradicate any eye for the strike zone, PCA’s aggressive and game-changing style will serve him and the Cubs well, leading to more and more explosive moments as he and his team try to carve their way up and out past the regular-season schedule and into their first postseason berth since the COVID-shortened 2020 season.