Pete Crow-Armstrong didn't just earn National League Most Valuable Player honors in 2026. He also put together one of the greatest MVP seasons the league has seen in the past half-century.
PCA swept to NL MVP honors in unanimous fashion, earning all 30 first-place votes in balloting released Thursday, Nov. 12 by the Baseball Writers' Association of America. The coronation seemed a formality, as "MVP!" chants grew louder in Wrigley Field and anywhere the Cubs took their five-tool center fielder on the road.
And by season's end, it was almost unfathomable what this 6-foot, 184-pound center fielder produced.
He led the major leagues with 45 home runs – and also topped every fielder at every position with 26 outs above average.
He led the NL with a
.570 slugging percentage and .943 OPS - and also stole 41 bases in 48 attempts, becoming the seventh member of baseball's 40-40 club.
He led the majors with 119 runs scored as the leadoff man for an 89-win club, and his adjusted OPS was 56% higher than league average.
Add it all up, and Crow-Armstrong produced a major league-leading 9.8 WAR, as calculated by Baseball-Reference.
That's the most impactful NL MVP season, by that metric, since Barry Bonds accrued 10.6 WAR in 2004, the third time in four years he produced double-digits in that category. Before Bonds, Colorado's Larry Walker posted a 9.8 WAR, equal to PCA, in winning the 1997 MVP.
And to find a superior MVP season not moored in the high era of baseball's performance-enhancing drug scandal or played at altitude (though WAR partially bakes that in), we have to go back to Bonds in 1993 (9.9) and Joe Morgan way back in 1975, when he posted 11 WAR on the strength of a .466 OBP and 67 steals.
At 24 years old, PCA stands shoulder to shoulder with those greats.
Shohei Ohtani, the two-way superstar reduced to hitting only in the second half of the season, finished second to Crow-Armstrong, earning 26 of 30 second-place votes; it ended his streak of consecutive NL MVPs at two and his overall streak at three, as he was 2023 AL MVP with the Los Angeles Angels.
Milwaukee Brewers second baseman Brice Turang finished third, while Cincinnati Reds shortstop Elly De La Cruz and Cy Young Award winner Jacob Misiorowski rounded out the top five.
For Crow-Armstrong, it's been a meteoric rise, from 19th overall pick by the New York Mets, to his 2021 trade to the Cubs in exchange for Javier Báez, to his year-over-year gains in less sexy but crucial categories like contact and walk rate, all of which have coalesced to make him arguably the game's best all-around everyday player.
And now, National League MVP, perhaps the first of more to come as he becomes the ninth Chicago Cub to win an MVP award, first since Kris Bryant in 2016.
"I immediately think back to Ryno," Crow-Armstrong said of 1984 NL MVP Ryne Sandberg in an interview on MLB Network after the announcement. Sandberg passed away in July 2025. "He made himself available to a lot of us the last few years. He was hugely important to the last few years of my life. I just saw Andre Dawson the other day in New York. Sammy (Sosa) was a big part of this year. KB and I just talked today.
"I don’t know where to put myself in that. I’ve been so fortunate to be around so many great Cubs. I’m happy to carry on their legacy and be able to continue to have their names brought up in conversations like this."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Pete Crow-Armstrong is one of the greatest NL MVPs in history. Here's why.
