Recovering from a slump that stretched from the second half of 2025 into the first several weeks of this season, Pete Crow-Armstrong now leads all of MLB in WAR – and is making a strong case to be MVP of the National League.
Through the first half of the 2025 MLB season, one inescapable story was the breakout of Chicago Cubs center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong.
After an offensively underwhelming season in 2024 that saw the young outfielder get accustomed to the big leagues, PCA exploded out of the gate in 2025 to pave the way for what was eventually a 30-30-30 season, with over 30 doubles, home runs and stolen bases.
The end-of-season numbers for PCA remained wildly impressive. The then-23-year-old finished with 5.9 WAR, 37 doubles, 31 home runs, 95 RBI and 35 stolen bases alongside a .247/.287/.481/.768 slash line, good for a 115 OPS+.
Already perhaps the game’s best defender at any position, PCA’s 2.0 defensive WAR last year helped propel him to his first career Gold Glove award while also finishing ninth in NL MVP voting.
Despite the great numbers at the end of the season, it was impossible to ignore how much the young outfielder struggled in the second half of the season, and how a true MVP candidate in July ended up finishing in ninth by the end of the season.
The differences were stark, with PCA amassing an .847 OPS with 25 home runs and a .265 batting average in the first half before scuffling to a .216/.262/.372/.634 slash line in the second half of the season, managing to hit just five of his 31 home runs across the final 62 games of the season.
Crow-Armstrong’s struggles were the most obvious in August of last year, which saw the young outfielder hit just .160 with an abysmal .446 OPS, finishing the month with 29 strikeouts to just 16 hits. While his OPS jumped 200 points in September, that still wasn’t enough to get him back to his first half production, as PCA hit .224 with six extra-base hits in the season’s final month.
In a lot of ways, these struggles could be chalked up to PCA’s free-swinging nature and still-developing knowledge of the strike zone. While Crow-Armstrong was known to be able to do plenty of damage with the bat last year, he was not exactly known to be a tough out, posting just 29 walks across 647 plate appearances.
That right there is the biggest difference, and it’s what has allowed PCA to transition from All-Star into superstar this season.
At first, it really didn’t feel like this was the direction things were headed, especially as Crow-Armstrong noticeably struggled to start the season with many of the same weaknesses from the back half of 2025 showing up again in games early on in 2026.
Crow-Armstrong’s March/April seemed to provide evidence for that, with a .241/.307/.362/.669 slash line, accompanied by three home runs and six stolen bases with nine walks and 38 strikeouts.
Things started to turn around in May, with PCA’s monthly OPS climbing nearly 100 points despite his batting average actually slipping to .233. Aided by 10 of his 24 knocks going for extra bases, the month also saw PCA begin to walk on a more regular basis, a phenomenon that has only continued in the two months since.
So far this summer, PCA has been just about the best player in baseball, coupling a 1.249 OPS in June and a 1.157 OPS in July with 1.6 defensive WAR and 20 outs above average – with PCA leading all of MLB, regardless of position, in the latter category.
What the Cubs have seen in the star player in parts of the past two seasons is everything they hoped Pete Crow-Armstrong could be when they sent Javier Báez to the New York Mets at the 2021 trade deadline. At just 24 years old, Crow-Armstrong is already a true five-tool star, appearing so far to be the elite blue chip prospect that does reach his potential on all fronts.
It’s what makes the MVP debate a real conversation in 2026, especially if PCA is able to avoid the precipitous fall-off he withstood in the second half of 2025.
Leading all of MLB with 6.5 bWAR entering play on July 26, Crow-Armstrong has some margin for error, with his WAR eclipsing that of Shohei Ohtani’s by nearly an entire win – and that’s including Ohtani’s contributions on the mound, which will play a major role in PCA’s chances to win NL MVP.
In addition to needing continued elite play through the playoff push in the final two months of the season, PCA’s MVP case is also reliant on how Ohtani performs through the rest of the year, with the two-way star likely needing a bit more time on the mound to lock up his fifth MVP.
At the plate, Ohtani has managed a 150 OPS+ with 18 doubles and 22 home runs, all while going 8-2 with an asinine 1.79 ERA across 14 starts this season. The catch to this is that Ohtani has not appeared on the mound since July 3, with the generational star slated to be out of the rotation “for the foreseeable future.”
While this is first and foremost horrible news for the Dodgers and their eventual chances to three-peat as champions, it also opens the door a little bit for Crow-Armstrong to build some daylight in the MVP race, which appears to be a two-player race at this point.
Of course, what would further aid PCA’s argument for the prestigious award would be to play a starring role for a team that gets hot in the second half of the season, with the Cubs still holding on to hope that they can chase down the first-place Milwaukee Brewers, who maintain a six-game lead in the NL Central.
Taking the division race out of the picture, the Cubs appear to be in a good position to make the postseason for a second consecutive year. Occupying the top Wild Card spot with a 4.5 game lead over the current third Wild Card team in the Arizona Diamondbacks, the Cubs are given a 91% chance to make the playoffs by Baseball Reference entering play on July 26 – odds that every team but the Dodgers would likely take.
Although chasing down the Brewers is certainly a tall task, Crow-Armstrong can solidify his case for the award even by having a little regression from his otherworldly June and July performances, both of which saw his OPS soar above 1.100.
I don’t expect PCA to reach the finish line of the season without slumping again, but that alone spells out what makes Crow-Armstrong so immensely valuable – and a true five-tool star. He doesn’t need to be a superstar hitter all the time to be providing his team with tangible value – something he’s consistently able to do in the field and on the basepaths, regardless of his success at the plate.
I’ll admit that this wasn’t an outcome I really saw coming. After PCA’s struggles in the back half of last season were followed up by a slow start this year, I myself began to think that perhaps the Cubs could have made a mistake in extending Crow-Armstrong. That his free-swinging nature had meant that the league’s pitchers had figured him out – that he could be neutralized by simply avoiding much of the strike zone, leaving pitchers committed to capitalizing on one glaring weakness that couldn’t ever be alleviated.
Turns out, I was dead wrong, and I couldn’t be happier to be wrong. Yet this adjustment didn’t come out of nowhere or simply from luck – it’s the product of a superstar who is equally as dedicated and hard-working as he is talented, the deadly combination that is always known to create the greatest athletes we’ve ever seen.
So much has been made of the greatness of stars like Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Tom Brady, Alex Rodriguez, Connor McDavid and many other generational talents of their sports. What serves as the connective tissue between all-time greats of different sports is how they were able to bond their innate, supernatural talent with an insatiable thirst for winning and greatness – the kind that isn’t quenched with a single award or championship.
At 24 years old, it’s impossible to tell if that’s how PCA’s career is going to turn out. But it’s clear to everyone around baseball that he has the juice to do all of those things and go down as one of this generation’s greatest players. It was immediately clear he’s always had the talent to do that – but this year’s adjustments at the plate show that he may also have the work ethic and drive as well. If that’s the case, then that’s pretty scary news for the rest of MLB.
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