With runners on second and third, two outs, and a one-run lead in the top of the ninth inning on Wednesday afternoon, the Pirates intentionally walked the Cubs rookie center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong. A sign of respect? Eh, maybe a little bit. Though it was more likely about creating a force out at any base and ensuring a (theoretically) better right-on-right matchup with Christian Bethancourt (… which did not work out for them). But still.
By loading the bases, the Pirates risked a game-tying walk. And perhaps more to the point, Pete Crow-Armstrong had already logged FOUR hits in the game. He was locked in, and that’s not really anything new.
While yesterday marked the first four-hit game of PCA’s career, it was also his fourth multi-hit game in the last six contests. Indeed, anyone watching knows it’s been a particularly strong (obscure-record-setting, even) week for the Cubs’ 22-year-old center fielder.
Pete Crow-Armstrong is Here
Over his full season (303 PAs), PCA has an 87 wRC+, which means he’s been about 13% worse than the league-average hitter overall. Of course, as we’ve explained in the past, with his speed (26 stolen bases, many extra bags taken) and defense (as elite as it gets at one of the most premium positions), PCA has already been worth roughly 2.0 WAR.
Over a full season, then, even if he never got any better than 13% *WORSE* than the league-average hitter, he’d be a 4.0+ WAR player. That’s all-star level. In other words, PCA – the PCA we’ve been dreaming about – has already arrived.
But hey, we don’t need to completely ignore how incredible he’s been lately.
If you want to play the convenient cutoff game, you can go back a FULL month (108 PAs) to reveal an absolutely insane slash line from PCA: .330/.387/.567 (162 wRC+). Nobody expects him to do that over a full season (if he did, with his speed and defense, he’d be … the greatest Cub ever), but that’s how impressive he’s been for a while now.
And it’s supported by all sorts of promising advanced analytics. Let’s cut his season into two almost equal stretches to illustrate our point.
Pretty easy to see the direct and significant increases in average, on-base percentage, and power, all of which is even more impressive as he maintains a completely sustainable (if not low, given his speed and contact quality) .291 BABIP. But let’s dig further.
Plate Discipline
Let’s start with the basics, walk and strikeout rate:
I don’t think I need to point out how impressive that is for anyone, let alone a rookie. But yeah, wow. And even better is how believable those improvements are based on the underlying data.
Swinging at fewer balls, swinging at more strikes, making more contact, whiffing less often. All good stuff. Of course, even those improvements wouldn’t be as impressive if he were simply making more weak contact. Strikeouts are bad, but you don’t want to sacrifice power just to put the bat on the ball, even with his speed. But as you might expect, that’s not what’s happening. At all.
Contact Quality
Again, let’s start with the basic stuff, before diving into Statcast:
More line drives and fly balls and way fewer grounders? Uh, yeah. That’ll play. But again, context matters. So is he hitting it any harder? Is he barreling up more? You already know the answer:
It’s almost impossible to overstate how much better PCA is performing at the plate over these last eight weeks or so. The results speak for themselves, I know, but when those numbers are supported by an improvement in almost every single underlying metric from plate discipline, to contact quality, to luck … I’m truly blown away.
The sample size is the biggest yellow flag here, obviously. And nobody should expect anything close to this level of overall offensive production over a full season (again, that would make him one of the greatest Cubs ever). But he doesn’t need to be any better than he’s been OVERALL this year to be an extraordinarily valuable member of the Chicago Cubs for a very long time. And that sample is already up over 300 plate appearances, so … good start.
