D-D-Don’t Stop the Pete

“I’m so sick of this friggin’ guy,” is one of the greatest compliments one can pay an opposing athlete. And the Dodgers must be sick to death of Pete Crow-Armstrong. The Cubs and Dodgers, who opened the season together in Japan, just played five games in the span of 13 days to complete their season series. In those five games, Crow-Armstrong did his normal speed-and-defense act, but he also went 10-for-22 with four home runs.

In the two-game series that just ended, PCA went 3-for-5 with a home run and a double in the first game, and 3-for-4 with a home run and two stolen bases in the second. The Cubs won each game by one run; I don’t think it’s at all unfair to say that in a series that featured the Dodgers’ vaunted three-MVP lineup, plus Kyle Tucker, Dansby Swanson, Teoscar Hernández, and a partridge in a pear tree, it was the young PCA who singlehandedly turned the tide.

Crow-Armstrong was a famous prospect because he has a memorable name and backstory, and he got drafted by the Mets, a team whose fans are not only numerous and loud, but super duper normal about their prospects. Crow-Armstrong was a good prospect because he’s a plus-plus runner with a plus-plus glove in center field, and center fielders who can put up 20 runs of combined baserunning and defensive value in a season can be league-average starters even if they don’t hit a little.

If all that sounds familiar, I’m flattered, because it means you remember something I wrote way back in September. Back then, Crow-Armstrong was in the midst of a hot streak. Early in the season, he’d been a poor hitter, but he changed his stance and swing midway through the season and improved his offense significantly.

I actually wrote about this type of swing and approach change earlier this week with respect to Cedric Mullins. Crow-Armstrong is listed at 6-foot tall and 184 pounds, and while those dimensions belie the running back’s physique he’s grown into, PCA is still a small(ish) fast guy. Conventional wisdom says that small, fast guys — especially left-handed ones — should gear their swings for contact in order to take greatest advantage of their legs. You can beat out a weak grounder and turn a single into a double by stealing second, but you can’t run your way out of a strikeout.

That logic is reasonable enough, but Mullins has made his greatest leaps as a player when he’s rejected the short-and-fast-guy approach and started swinging like the big dogs. PCA is in the middle of speedrunning the Mullins developmental curve, cramming about five years’ worth of evolution into nine months.

What does that mean from a practical standpoint? Well, first-half PCA was like a Billy Hamilton or a Jacob Young — a great guy to have in the field, but someone you have to hide at the bottom of the lineup. Second-half PCA was like a rich man’s Kevin Kiermaier or a faster Jackie Bradley Jr. — an above-average hitter who nestles up against All-Star-level total value because of bonkers defense at a premium position.

Look at that from the Cubs’ perspective. This is a player they got in a rental trade for Javier Báez, who caused a major crisis for the Mets by answering a question honestly, then went on to sign with the Tigers. (And since we’re telling harsh truths at the moment, if you asked me which team screwed up the worst by signing a member of the 2016 Cubs, I’d have to think a minute before answering: The Rockies and Kris Bryant.)

Crow-Armstrong solidifies Chicago’s elite up-the-middle defense with Swanson and Nico Hoerner, and since the Cubs have Tucker, Ian Happ, and Seiya Suzuki to carry the offensive burden, they can get by just fine if PCA is merely a good no. 7 hitter or what have you.

But through 26 games, PCA has a 146 wRC+. Over a full season, that would’ve put him between Ketel Marte and Bryce Harper on the leaderboard in 2024. That would render the Kiermaier comp pretty much irrelevant, because I don’t think Kiermaier could do that in his prime with a metal bat.

Back in September, the most optimistic appraisal of Crow-Armstrong’s offense that I could imagine was a wRC+ in the 120s, which would’ve translated to about 6 WAR on a per-season basis, given his defense. Peak Lorenzo Cain was the example I used at the time.

But what’s the next step? Well, since 2000, there are 540 individual player seasons in which a player qualified for the batting title while primarily playing center field. In 48 of those cases, the player in question registered at least 15 runs of defensive value. When I sorted the leaderboard, Franklin Gutierrez’s 2009 campaign whistled to the top, as if to remind me that defensive stats were a bit wonky in the not-too-distant past. Nevertheless, you’ll like this next part.

Crow-Armstrong’s wOBA currently sits at .384. Only five of those mondo defensive seasons came with a wOBA of .380 or higher.

Try to concentrate on how good Ellsbury and Sizemore were at the time, and not the fact that they both had their careers cut short by injury.

You got the vapors right now? I’ve got the vapors. This could be the moment a fun player turns into a future MVP, right? I mean, we haven’t seen a two-way center fielder like this in more than a decade.

Crow-Armstrong’s performance this season has been thrilling, especially after he did the damn thing in a big series against the heavy World Series favorite. In a different sport, the past two weeks would’ve changed global perception about this player.

Unfortunately, I have to pump the brakes slightly. Certainly, Crow-Armstrong beating the brains out of the Dodgers is nothing but a positive indicator, but I’d stop short of saying that it proves he has That Dawg In Him or anything like that. Especially because his underlying numbers, while still impressive, don’t exactly back up the Zoomer Grady Sizemore comp.

Even taking the most conservative view of PCA’s performance, I would say that he’s solidified the offensive gains he made in the second half of 2024. He’s a flat-out better hitter than someone like Young or… I was about to say Brenton Doyle but he’s also tearing the cover off the ball at the moment, so maybe I’ll check in on him later.

But rather than backing up Crow-Armstrong as a true-talent .380 wOBA guy, according to xwOBA, PCA is more or less the same hitter he was eight months ago. Even since then, he’s making more contact and better swing decisions, so I have no problem believing that there’s another level in there. He’s just not quite as good as his surface stats indicate so far this year.

All of that is surely of no comfort to the Dodgers, who would be at least two games better off if Crow-Armstrong had decided to regress to the mean a couple weeks earlier. Is he a star? We’ll see. But he’s definitely produced some star moments.

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