Should We Have Expected This Power From Pete Crow-Armstrong?

The names atop the FanGraphs Wins Above Replacement leaderboard as of this writing read as such: 

1. Aaron Judge: 4.6
2. Pete Crow-Armstrong: 3.1

The gap between the two notwithstanding, the Chicago Cubs' centerfielder has been the second-most valuable player in the majors thus far. We knew his baserunning and defensive prowess would carry him to a respectable figure there, regardless of his offensive contributions. To some extent, it has; his 3.2 BsR baserunning metric ranks sixth in the sport, and his Fielding Run Value figure of 9 paces the league. What really stands out through nearly two months of the year, though, is the power he's generated at the plate. 

Crow-Armstrong has already slugged 14 home runs in 225 plate appearances (a top-10 total), and boasts a gaudy .290 isolated power (ISO, the difference between slugging and batting average). So not only do you have a player with 97th-percentile sprint speed, but you have one who's putting the ball over the fence almost as often as anyone in baseball.

An interesting thing to think about in this is whether we should have expected it. Since being drafted in 2020, the book on Crow-Armstrong is exactly what you'd imagine it'd be. Scouting reports may have indicated some power, but speed and defense were always expected to be the foundational components of his game. Was there anything sitting in the draft scouting or in his minor-league output that indicated such power was on the horizon?

The following is a collection of scouting reports before or upon Crow-Armstrong's selection 19th overall by the New York Mets in 2020. I've included only a selection in which his power potential is noted. 

MLB Pipeline: 

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"There's some question as to how much power he'll produce, but he could develop into a 15-homer threat as he adds more strength and turns on more pitches."

FanGraphs: 

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"Crow-Armstrong did, however, come out having added substantial muscle and some teams think he'll hit for more power than the industry would have projected based on 2019 looks."

Baseball America: 

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"Crow-Armstrong's tools and instincts have teams interested in the first round even with questions about his power."

Baseball Prospectus: 

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"He's not a big, physical player but the ball jumps off the bat due to his extremely quick bat speed. Over-the-fence power is mostly to the pull side but will be able to produce loads of doubles and average home run totals at the big league level."

The fascinating part of these is that there wasn't a consensus on this aspect of his game. If you go through the remainder of those reports, you get the expected bits about the other tools. When it came to his pop, though, predictions varied widely in both confidence and direction.

Crow-Armstrong's minor league output gave us little reason to think that power like this was in the cards early in his career. He hit 16 homers across two levels in 2022, and 20 between two in 2023. But while there was a slight increase between the two seasons, he hit only 15 between Triple-A and the major-league level last year. Given the variance in the initial scouting and the relatively low home run totals while scaling the ladder, it's impossible to say that we expected what he's done to this point. 

A fun aspect about Crow-Armstrong is that he can derive "power" from his speed, stretching singles to doubles and doubles to triples. But he's also flashed a Barrel rate around 14%, driving the ball to a degree that we didn't expect. Given the bat speed, which is up about 1.2 MPH from last year, he should continue to find success in putting the ball over the fence while driving up the rate-based power figures (ISO, SLG) courtesy of his speed. 

The other tools were already helping him to compensate for the hyperaggressiveness of his approach. But if you're going to continue to get star-level power output from him, this is a whole new ballgame.