The Most Hated Man in Baseball Is Also One of the Best
Funny how that works, isn’t it. Pete Crow-Armstrong is the crown jewel of Chicago, the guy Cubs fans would run through a wall for — and simultaneously, somehow, the most despised player in the sport to literally everyone wearing a different jersey. Both things are true at once. And right now? Only one of them actually matters, because the numbers have stopped arguing and started screaming.
Busch Stadium Started It. He Finished It.
Rewind to May 30th. Crow-Armstrong steps into Busch Stadium and gets serenaded with “overrated” chants from a rowdy Cardinals crowd that clearly thought they were being clever. He responded the only way a man like that responds — by launching one into the tarps-off section in right field. Didn’t say a word. Didn’t need to. The bat did the talking, and the bat has not shut up since.
Since that night, Crow-Armstrong has been operating on a different plane of existence entirely — the kind of stretch that single-handedly makes watching a flailing Cubs team worth your evening.
For the WAR-Deniers, Here’s the Receipt You Can’t Dodge
Let’s address the elephant in the room. There’s a certain breed of fan who conveniently decides WAR doesn’t matter the second it tells a story they don’t like. Fine. Forget WAR for a second — though, for the record, he’s sitting at 4.1 fWAR and 4.3 bWAR, second and first in all of baseball respectively, which is genuinely absurd.
Let’s just talk traditional stats instead. Wednesday night, 8-6 win over Colorado, Crow-Armstrong goes deep for the third straight game — fourth time in his last five. That’s not WAR. That’s not some advanced metric cooked up in a spreadsheet. That’s a man hitting baseballs over fences with a frequency that should be illegal.
The Last 17 Games Are Borderline Cartoonish
Look at this stretch and tell me with a straight face this guy isn’t an MVP candidate. Nine home runs — tied for first in all of MLB. A .425 batting average, third in the league. A .918 slugging percentage, first in the league. A 274 wRC+, second. A 1.374 OPS, second. And leading all of baseball outright with a 2.3 fWAR in that span alone.
For context, some players don’t put up numbers like that across an entire season. Crow-Armstrong did it in 17 games.
This Isn’t a Hot Streak. This Is a Different Hitter.
Here’s where it gets genuinely interesting, because the obvious question is whether this is sustainable or just another mirage before the inevitable crash — Cubs fans watched this exact movie in 2025, after all, when a hot first half completely fell apart in the second. So what’s actually changed?
Everything, as it turns out. His walk rate has nearly doubled, climbing from 4.4% to 7.8%. His hard-hit rate has jumped from 43.7% to 51.9%, now sitting in the 93rd percentile league-wide. His chase rate outside the zone has dropped from 46.2% to 36.8%. His overall swing rate is down from 61.5% to 52.0%. His contact rate inside the zone is up. Even his bat speed has increased, from 72.3 mph to 74.9 mph.
Translation, for anyone who doesn’t live in Baseball Savant: he’s swinging less, swinging harder, and connecting more often in the zone. That’s not luck. That’s not variance. That’s a hitter who fundamentally retooled his approach and is now reaping the rewards.
The Sample Size Isn’t Small Anymore
This isn’t some flash-in-the-pan two-week hot streak either. Dating back to April 28th, Crow-Armstrong ranks third in all of MLB with 14 home runs, fifth with a 174 wRC+, fifth with a .998 OPS, and leads every single player in baseball with 3.5 fWAR over that span. That’s a body of work, not a fluke.
And let’s not forget what he’s doing on the other side of the ball. The man who became the first Cub to post a 30/30 season since the 1990s back in 2024 is on pace to do it again this year — while still playing some of the best defence in the entire sport. Best defender. Elite bat. Real, sustainable plate discipline gains. That combination doesn’t come around often.
Hot take to close: The haters can keep clutching their narratives, keep cherry-picking whatever stat fits their argument that day, keep pretending last year’s second-half slump is somehow more relevant than this year’s complete transformation. None of it changes what’s actually happening on the field. Right now, Pete Crow-Armstrong isn’t just an MVP candidate. He’s making a real case to be the best all-around player in baseball — and every single chant of “overrated” just adds another log to the fire. 🔥
