Pete Crow-Armstrong led off the bottom of the first in the Crosstown Classic with a home run. Then he walked off the game with his 30th home run, which locked in back-to-back 30-30 seasons. For good measure he started the next game with (you guessed it) a home run. Let’s rewatch that walkoff again [VIDEO].
It’s been an electric show of offensive and defensive prowess on the North Side of Chicago from the 24-year-old who’s improved his
on-base profile so much at the plate this season. I’ve written extensively about the metrics that show PCA is the best defender in the Statcast Era and his new approach at the plate this season, but it’s worth demonstrating the latter one more time. You can see how he’s reset the floor in this 15-game rolling wOBA graph from FanGraphs:
In case charts and numbers aren’t your jam, PCA put on a clinic during the Dodgers series demonstrating that he has just as good of a case as Shohei Ohtani to be the 2026 MVP. As of writing this column, PCA is the favorite to win the award:
The MVP debate is everywhere. ESPN polled 20 players, 15 voted for Pete Crow-Armstrong. You can hear the takes on your favorite podcast, read them in The Athletic, or just check out this compelling case made by our own Tortuga Cub here at BCB earlier this week. Tortuga concludes:
He’s the Frontrunner, and a Worthy One
I think it’s easy to look at the MVP race and say, well, with Ohtani off the mound for so long, PCA is basically a fallback option.
But while there is truth to the idea that Ohtani’s health has opened the door, as unless Ohtani threw some real stinkers his pitching would catapult him ahead in the race, PCA’s MVP case is one of the strongest we’ve seen in the NL in decades.
He’s still on pace for more than 10 fWAR, a feat we haven’t seen achieved in the NL since Barry Bonds.
A 10 fWAR season is no small feat, in fact, it’s such rarified air it demands we take a step back and look at the season PCA is putting together from a historical lens rather than the lens of a single season.
We are witnessing one of the greatest Cubs seasons of all time:
WAR is a counting stat, you compile or lose it over the course of playing games. So it’s a little mindblowing to look at this table and realize that with 34 games left to play this season Pete Crow-Armstrong already has the 8th best season in Cubs history by fWAR. Look at the seasons he’s flirting with: Sammy Sosa’s 2001 season that saw him hit 64 home runs and finish second in MVP balloting to Barry Bonds. Sammy’s .328/.437/.737 would be one of the most incredible seasons in baseball history were it not compared to Bonds who compiled 12.5 fWAR that season as he set the single season home run record with 73 long balls and an absurd .328/.515/.863 slashline.
Performance-enhanced seasons aside, with 100-140 fewer plate appearances than Ron Santo, Ernie Banks and Rogers Hornsby, Crow-Armstrong not only looks like he belongs in the “this is obviously a top 10 all-time Cubs season” conversation, he looks like he’ll surpass some of them. I had to do a double take looking at this chart realizing PCA has already surpassed Ryne Sandberg’s 1984 MVP season. On his current trajectory FanGraphs various projection systems would put him at the fourth or fifth best season in Cubs history:
What’s wild about those projections is how conservative they are. Every single one of them projects regression for PCA, and of course they do. A leap from an OBP of .287 to an OBP of .378 in a single season just isn’t a thing most hitters do in MLB. The thing is, this looks like a real approach change at the plate, and if that’s true, it’s likely more sustainable, which would make the ROS projection of a worse OBP and lower walk rate less likely. To demonstrate the change I ran the chart from before, but overlayed OBP with PCA’s O-Swing, the number of pitches he swings at out of the strike zone:
Let’s look at some more basic counting stats, however. As Josh noted in BCB After Dark a couple of nights ago, PCA could be on the cusp of one of the rarest of MLB feats: a 40-40 season. From Josh:
Only six players in MLB history have ever had 40 home runs and 40 steals in a season. They are
Jose Canseco (1988) 42 HR, 40 SB
Barry Bonds (1996) 42 HR, 40 SB
Alex Rodriguez (1998) 42 HR, 46 SB
Alfonso Soriano (2006) 46 HR, 41 SB
Ronald Acuña Jr. (2023) 41 HR, 73 SB
Shohei Ohtani (2024) 54 HR, 59 SB
Obviously Ohtani is the only member of the 50-50 club.
No Chicago Cub has ever recorded a 40-40 season.
Cubs fans are witnessing greatness day in and day out at the corner of Clark and Addison. PCA has leveled up his game in the span of 1,646 career plate appearances to develop from a glove-first defensive wizard with a strikeout problem and big questions about whether he’d be able to access the power he flashed in the minors to the NL MVP favorite putting together one of the best seasons in the 150-year history of the Chicago Cubs. Enjoy every second of it.
