Pete Crow-Armstrong and Alex Bregman Have Been Confidence Demons This Year

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It's been an exhilarating season for Pete Crow-Armstrong, in almost every possible way. He started the season by playing center field about as well as it's ever been played, and by making plays with his legs on offenses, even as he struggled at the plate overall. He seemed to be playing with swagger and intensity that exceeded even what he showed in 2025, despite those poor early results. It's not a coincidence that he did so after agreeing, just before Opening Day, to a six-year deal that will keep him in Chicago for the rest of his 20s.

Since mid-May, of course, Crow-Armstrong has gone to a new level. We've chronicled the physical and technical changes that have facilitated that change; they're fascinating in their own right. But one thing that's made him especially fun to watch—and which has also been a huge reason for his next-level breakout—is more mental than mechanical. With all that intensity and clarity of purpose, Crow-Armstrong beats himself up when he's going badly, and he sometimes fights so hard to get right that he goes even more wrong. However, when he starts to feel good, he can get molten-lava hot in a hurry.

Here's one small, incomplete way to capture that. In the five plate appearances after each of his first 44 home runs this season (he hit his 45th Sunday in Cincinnati), Crow-Armstrong batted .283/.373/.623. That's better than the .277/.369/.571 line he carried into play Sunday for the entire season, even though each of those samples necessarily removes one of his 44 most valuable plate appearances from the mix. Even if you start on May 22, when he hit his sixth homer and began the torrid streak he's been on ever since, his line in the five trips after each homer (.296/.385/.663) is almost identical to his line in that span overall (.300/.397/.664).

If you just stop at the end of each game—take, in other words, the plate appearances that came after a homer in any given game, but not any that stretched into ensuing days—Crow-Armstrong is batting .351/.430/.824 after dingers this year. Once he gets you once, he's much more likely to get you again. Maybe that'll be another homer; maybe it will just be another hit or walk. But any home run is a sign that Crow-Armstrong is clicking, and he gains momentum from it, rather than being satisfied or getting overeager the next time up.

He's not alone in this regard. In fact, Alex Bregman is an even more eye-popping case study. In the 130 trips to the plate following his 26 homers this season, Bregman is batting .299/.369/.709. If you focus only on the times he comes up in the same game, he breaks the scale: .395/.435/1.070. His OPS is over 1.500 for the rest of any game in which he hits a dinger. Even taking his season line only since he got hot just before the All-Star break (.293/.372/.612) as a comparator, Bregman has been unbelievably good for the rest of the day after he goes yard.

Compare those two to Seiya Suzuki, the team's (slightly) steadier slugger. In the five-plate appearance windows after each of his first 24 homers (he hit No. 25 Sunday against the Reds), Suzuki batted .308/.400/.490. That's an impressive line, better than Suzuki's .267/.366/.467 line, but it's not the same heat that Bregman and Crow-Armstrong have carried over after each of their bombs. For the balance of the game, after each homer, he's much more patient, but nowhere near as dangerous: .282/.404/.333.

This is far from a robust way to tell how much a hitter is tending to get hot or to feed off their most recent success. For one thing, homers aren't the only sign of hitting well. Still, that Crow-Armstrong and Bregman have been so unstoppable in the short periods after each time they go deep—even going deep again, often, within that window or within the same game—is impressive and unusual. Crow-Armstrong's seven multi-homer games and Bregman's four are only partial proof that they get an extra gleam in their eye once they ambush a pitcher once; these data suggest it even more strongly.

It's not clear which of these tendencies is better for the team. Each of Suzuki, Crow-Armstrong and Bregman has taken a turn carrying the club this year, as you can see in this rolling 16-game chart of their wRC+.

Suzuki's streakiness runs a little more in fortnights and months, rather than days and weeks. It's still streakiness, though, and almost every player is streaky, if you break down their data just right. Nonetheless, it's worth knowing (and noting) that Crow-Armstrong and Bregman have been this dangerous once they get ahold of a ball. It's one expression of what every fan has felt all year: these guys feed not only off each other, but off their own success. That makes them dangerous, for the balance of the waning regular season and on into October.