Pete Crow-Armstrong Coming Along Offensively, Cubs Working on Earlier Outfield Calls
If you have a penchant for looking at traditional batting lines with no regard for context, you may think Pete Crow-Armstrong is a bad hitter. There’s certainly nothing about his .204/.249/.332 slash line to indicate he’s been successful over 229 plate appearances this season. Even looking at a mildly esoteric number like his .128 ISO tells you PCA ranks 211th out of 301 MLB hitters with at least 200 PAs this season when it comes to raw power.
But if you start poking around under the hood a little bit, maybe just at the bleeding edge of cherry-picking, you’ll see things starting to look better. Since starting the second half with an 0-for-20 slump almost exactly like his career got going in 2023, PCA has gone 11-for-33 with three doubles and two triples. That puts his slugging at .545 with a .212 ISO that still has room to climb.
How’s he doing it?
“Day in and day out,” Crow-Armstrong told reporters last week. “We’ve been working on how to get me being completely myself in the box and unlocking the good parts of me as a hitter. There’s been a lot of hand-holding through that, but I’ve come a long way.”
The Cubs are so willing to give their center fielder more leeway at the plate because his glove dictates he just needs to be somewhere around a league-average hitter. His defensive metrics are all in the elite range, with his 11 defensive runs saved ranking second among center fielders and eighth among all MLB defenders. His seven outs above average put him in a tie for 28th overall, with most of those ahead of him having logged far more innings in the field.
Then there’s the 99th percentile sprint speed that allows him to cover ground like the Pony Express. Of course, there’s a downside to that as well. Crow-Armstrong is so supremely confident in his ability to get to every ball that can end up making the occasional gaffe, like when he called Nico Hoerner off of what appeared to be a routine fly for the second baseman. Even though the center fielder has authority, discretion is often the better part of valor.
“I’m appreciative of that but I think we’re past the point of giving me a little leash there,” PCA said when informed by reporters that his fellow Cubs gave him grace for the miscue. “I definitely appreciate that from my teammates. I’d say the same thing to Nico because that was his ball.
“I know better. I just did a poor job of checking for him. I think that’s just me needing to slow the game down or that play down.”
Though it should probably go without saying, especially with a number of Gold Glove winners, the Cubs have been spending more time working on the basics out in the field. That includes the nuances of simply communicating out there.
“We’re trying to make the earliest calls you can, I think that’s one of the things we talk about and try to work on,” Ian Happ explained to 670 The Score’s Bernstein & Holmes Tuesday morning. “It’s, ‘Hey, if I can call it early and give you time to get out of there, then I can really commit to my line on going to catch the ball.’ You don’t always get the opportunity to do that with some of these balls, but the more you can do that, the better.”
That probably seems obvious to the point of being unnecessary to a lot of you, but consider that PCA hasn’t played with teammates this good before. He’s used to trying to make every play because he’s pretty much had to. At the same time, other Cubs defenders haven’t played with (m)any center fielders who possess the range and preternatural talent of Crow-Armstrong. Therein lies the need to strike a balance between making sure the kid knows his role without blunting any of what makes him so good.
Hey, almost sounds like they’re trying to thread the needle with this just like the rest of the roster moving forward. The big difference is that PCA’s superior athleticism and body control should allow him to adjust at the plate and in the field with more ease than it’ll take Jed Hoyer to guide the Cubs back into contention.