The Chicago Cubs declared themselves “all in” on Pete Crow-Armstrong before they had declared themselves “all in” on making the playoffs this season.
As a matter of fact, they had declared the young talent their starting center fielder for 2025 and beyond before the 2024 season had even finished. And, to double down on that sentiment, they traded away Cody Bellinger in the offseason.
It was a daring move, albeit a bit puzzling for a team with postseason aspirations to invest so much into a 22-year-old who had struggled mightily in all but one month of his major league career.
Pete Crow-Armstrong At His Best
Oh, but what a month that was! In August of 2024, “PCA” hit .314 with four home runs, five doubles, and two triples. Add to that his elite glove work and electric base running and, well, it’s not hard to see why the Cubs fell in love with him. If he pans out and becomes a fully actualized player, developing into his full potential, this kid will be mega-special.
But that’s a huge “if.”
As a matter of fact, if you take away that one month of August, Crow-Armstrong’s career batting average is a dismal .199.
A great glove, quick legs, and a spunky attitude will only get you so far if you can’t keep your hitting above the Mendoza line.
And, so far, PCA’s start to 2025 hasn’t showcased any significant growth in the batting department.
Granted, we’re only two games into the season and he’s only had 7 at bats, but things haven’t looked good. To begin 2025, he’s struck out three times, made a lot of weak contact, and, worst of all, he’s still hacking away at just about everything and anything.
PCA At His Worst So Far In 2025
Matthew Trueblood of North Side Baseball crunched the early numbers, revealing that the soon-to-be 23-year-old has swung at 22 of the 29 pitches he’s seen in his first two games. He doesn’t believe that it’s too early to be seriously concerned about the sophomore center fielder.
Per Trueblood:
“Pete Crow-Armstrong simply can not swing this much. It’s untenable,…
Crow-Armstrong swung at 57.1% of the pitches he saw in the minors in 2022. That number was 52.8% in 2023 and 60.1% in 2024. In the big leagues, he swung at 53.4% of everything he saw in 2023 and 59.1% of it in 2024. He’s swung at 53.5% of all pitches in the Cactus League this year and he went to Japan swinging more than ever.
There are two types of hitters who can succeed with an approach that aggressive:
1. Ones who blend plus or better power with plus or better feel for contact; and
2. I lied to you, on purpose, as a trap. There’s no second kind of hitter who can be good while swinging as much as this dude does.
Right now, Crow-Armstrong doesn’t have plus power, and he doesn’t have plus feel for contact, so he’s 0-for-2 on being the kind of unicorn who can sustain success as a regular while swinging indiscriminately….His best chance to be a good hitter, overall, is to stop swinging so damned much—but the stark reality that he has come into this season utterly unreformed should worry his boosters profoundly.”
Chicago Cubs Concerns
The concern is not necessarily about PCA doing poorly in his first two games, it’s about the way that he’s doing poorly and how he’s not altered his approach in the batter’s box to fix what has been his most glaring weakness.
A fine-tuned Crow-Armstrong would be a potent multi-tool asset for the Cubs. The player we’ve seen thus far, however, is far from fine-tuned.
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1 Comment
Today’s click-bait reporting reeks of desperation. How else can we explain the hand-wringing over a 1-for-8 start after a .500 spring from a guy who carried ROY stats the last half of last year? This group of scribes would be in the psych ward if they had to cover Ryne Sandberg’s 0-for-28 start to his career. Sports journalism is following fox news channel right down into the media sewer. PCA and Matt Shaw will recover long before this amateurish media coverage does. It’ getting embarrassing.