<p>As hot as Cubs center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong is, it’s easy to forget how cold he was.</p><p>Through 50 games, Crow-Armstrong was hitting .225 with an OPS of .659. He had five home runs and 20 RBI. The Cubs were halfway through what became a 10-game losing streak, and manager Craig Counsell was looking for answers.</p><p>After Crow-Armstrong homered in the next game, Counsell moved him from the bottom of the order to the top — the very top.</p><p>“When we moved Pete there, honestly, we needed a jump,” Counsell said. “We were struggling scoring runs, and we were looking for a spark. It wasn’t very analytical. Now I look at the lineup, and he just comes around more.”</p><p>Slowly but surely, Crow-Armstrong began to produce. He got hot in June, hitting 10 home runs in the first 18 games of the month. But it wasn’t until the Cubs’ trip that month to New York to face the Mets that Crow-Armstrong’s season completely changed.</p><p>The way bench coach Ryan Flaherty tells it, Crow-Armstrong was working in the batting cage at Citi Field with assistant hitting coach John Mallee. After his eighth swing, Crow-Armstrong walked out of the cage and essentially said, “I found something that I’m going to be able to repeat for a long time.”</p><p>“He’s a pretty honest kid,” Flaherty told the Sun-Times. “And here we are, two months after that, and he was right on.”</p><p>After the Cubs’ 7-5 loss to the Reds on Sunday night, Crow-Armstrong is hitting .283 with an OPS of .954, 38 homers — including in his first and last at-bats Sunday — and 91 RBI. According to wins above replacement, he entered the game as the most valuable player in baseball, with marks of 9.1 from Fangraphs and 8.3 from Baseball Reference.</p><p>And he’s the odds-on favorite to win the National League Most Valuable Player Award.</p><p>What the heck happened?</p><p>“It’s just the natural progression of a season,” Crow-Armstrong told the Sun-Times. “I’ve known that I’m capable of this. Obviously, there’s swing changes you can make. I definitely freed myself up by lowering the hands and creating a different kind of rhythm for myself and then implementing the leg kick.</p><p>“Getting on the dish against lefties really helped me learn the strike zone better. But then not feeling like I’m in any rush to get to two strikes. Once I’m there, I still feel like I can control the zone while also looking to do damage.”</p><p>Just last year, Crow-Armstrong occasionally would bunt with two strikes to try to make something happen. Now, 10 of his 38 homers have come with two strikes. Everyone knew he was a defensive phenom, thanks to his speed and athleticism. But the extent of his power has surprised most — but not him.</p><p>“That’s another thing that I’ve always had in me,” he said. “Even when I was in high school, I was kind of slappy, could go the other way really well. I just didn’t know how to pull the ball efficiently. Some swings I’d take I can remember like, Oh, I’ve got that in me, and then I just wouldn’t be able to translate it to the game.</p><p>“John Mallee made it make sense to me that my swing works in that way and I should take advantage of it. So the goal now is the opposite of who I thought I used to be, which was I want my direction to go to left-center so that when I’m early, I can pull the ball.</p><p>“Nah, man. I’m pulling everything you throw at me. That’s my goal. That’s what has helped me start moving really efficiently.”</p><p>Counsell said he knew Crow-Armstrong would hit home runs. It was just a matter of learning how to do it.</p><p>“He was a very young player to the big leagues,” Counsell said of Crow-Armstrong, who made his big-league debut shortly after turning 21. “It’s hard to be able to get the ball in the air to the pull side and have good pitch discipline. Those are two counter things, really, because you have to hit the ball out front, and that means you have to make a decision a little bit sooner.”</p><p>Crow-Armstrong also is proving you don’t need to be big and burly to put a ball into the bleachers.</p><p>“He’s very wiry strong,” Flaherty said. “Pound for pound, I bet he’s one of the stronger guys on the team. You watch him in the weight room, he’s strong. He looks the way he does, but he has the ability to create an absurd amount of force in a short period of time, which I think is where that power comes from. It’s always been there.”</p><p>And it doesn’t appear to be going anywhere.</p><p>“Every time he’s coming to bat right now, it’s like something special’s about to happen,” Flaherty said. “You think he isn’t going to do it again, and he does it again.”</p>
The anatomy of Cubs star Pete Crow-Armstrong’s potential MVP season 2026
IUSTITIA.BG – Investigations 2009-2026 2026-08-31 04:12:16
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