M-V-Pete!

I have talked about Pete Crow-Armstrong before, but 2026 is a season for the record books.

I remember seeing the movie Rookie of the Year in theaters when I was a kid. A movie about a young boy getting to play for the Cubs? It was like it was written for me. After its success, another movie about a child in baseball, Little Big League, came out in 1994. In this movie, a boy becomes the owner of a Major League Baseball team, the Twins. The boy’s mother was played by actress Ashley Crow.

Eight years later, she would give birth to the best defensive center fielder the Chicago Cubs have ever seen, Pete Crow-Armstrong.

Shortly after turning 18, he was drafted No. 19 overall by the Mets in 2020, but he didn’t play in the minors until 2021 due to COVID-19. He did not play much in 2021 either, as he needed right shoulder surgery after only 24 at-bats. He was the Mets’ fifth-best prospect, but after the injury, he became expendable. The Cubs targeted him in a trade in July of 2021. Javier Báez was a fan favorite because of the energy he brought to the team and his part in the 2016 World Series, but it was time to start rebuilding.

Cubs

Pete made the most of 2022. He slashed .354/.443/.557/1.000 in Single-A and was quickly promoted to High-A, where he continued to hold his own against older competition. He was named to the Futures Game and won a MiLB Gold Glove. People were noticing that not only could he play defense, but he could also handle himself at the plate.

Entering 2023 at just 21, he was the No. 28 prospect in all of baseball. After 73 games in Double-A, he was promoted to the Triple-A Iowa Cubs. He played well enough to earn an end-of-year call-up to the Cubs. He went without a hit in 19 plate appearances.

He started 2024 in Iowa again, but it was only a matter of weeks before his Major League career began. He didn’t set the world on fire, but he did show that he was here to stay. In 2025, it became clear that his offense might come close to matching his defense. Besides winning a Gold Glove, he finished ninth in MVP voting with a 30-30 season.

2026

Pete started 2026 relatively slowly. He even made a few mistakes in the outfield. There was fear that we had seen the best of PCA. But then came June. He hit .381 with 11 home runs and a 1.249 OPS. Then, in August, he hit 14 more home runs.

Mr. MVP, Shohei Ohtani, was a lock to win the award for most of the year, but when his pitching was shut down, Pete started sneaking into the race. Then, at the beginning of September, Ohtani hit the injured list.

PCA started the year with +2500 odds to win NL MVP. By August 15, he was dead even with Ohtani. But by September 15, the race was essentially over. Pete was now in a category all his own.

Stats

So how good was PCA in 2026? Let’s talk about WAR. The standard way to rank a player’s season is by using Wins Above Replacement. It estimates how many more wins a player provides than a replacement-level player. The all-time record is 20.2, but since 1923, the best mark was 13.3 by Doc Gooden in 1985. In the last twenty years of baseball, though, no one has gone over 11.

• Aaron Judge [10.9 (2024), 10.8 (2022)]
• Mookie Betts [10.7 (2018)]
• Mike Trout [10.5 (2012), 10.4 (2016)]

Those are the only three players in the last twenty years with a WAR higher than PCA’s 9.9.

It is the fourth-best Cubs WAR season of all time. Aside from Sammy Sosa’s questionable 2001 season, it is the best since 1959.

He was also only the seventh person ever to enter the 40-40 club. Ending the season with league-leading 45 home runs and 41 stolen bases.

This was not a fluke season. You cannot put up these types of numbers without elite abilities. Pete has given the city a truly elite player.

The last time the Cubs had an MVP was only ten years ago. Kris Bryant posted a 7.3 WAR and the Cubs went on to win a World Series championship.