Pete Crow-Armstrong was in a sort of mini-funk. The All-Star center fielder had gone 3 for his previous 20 with seven strikeouts and no extra-base hits and the Cubs were headed into a mid-September three-game series against the eventual NL East champion Braves. He was still the overwhelming favorite to win the National League MVP, but things hadn't been going right.
He popped out in foul territory in his first at-bat. Next time up, PCA sent a rocket double down the right-field line. And it was, as they say, on. He finished the game with four hits, including a home run, and four RBI. Two nights later, he went 3 for 4 with a triple and two home runs. In a single series against a playoff team, he had one four-hit game and another 11-base game.
"When he hit the second homer, Alex Bregman was standing next to me," Cubs manager Craig Counsell said after the two-home run game (via MLB.com). "I said, 'Alex, we don't get to see things like this.' You spend your whole life in baseball and you just don't see this happen on a baseball field. You're grateful to be a part of it.
"You're grateful to see things like this. And you're grateful that the fans get to see a season like this, because they're going to talk about it. They're going to tell their kids about it. They're going to tell their grandkids about seasons like this."
Bregman has seen plenty of elite-level play, too. The two-time World Series champion and four-time pennant winner played with 2017 American League MVP José Altuve and finished second himself in 2019. He was in the same division as Mike Trout for nine years. And Counsell is telling him about how special this is?
Counsell would know, too. As a player, he won the World Series with the 1997 Marlins and 2001 Diamondbacks. He was teammates with Ryan Braun during his 2011 MVP campaign and came up with the Rockies in the '90s while Larry Walker was in his prime. He also managed Christian Yelich during his MVP season in 2018.
And still, he sees something special in Crow-Armstrong.
The younger guys are taking notice, too.
"As far as the seasons I've seen in my experience in professional baseball, this is the best," Cubs utility infielder Matt Shaw told CBS Sports. "I don't think I've seen anything that even compares."
Crow-Armstrong finished his magical 2026 season on Sunday when he was removed for a pinch runner after singling to start the game. The final line: .280/.372/.570 (155 OPS+) with 31 doubles, eight triples, 45 home runs, 107 RBI, 119 runs, 41 steals, 9.8 bWAR, 10.6 fWAR and some of the best defensive stats in baseball. He was the seventh player in MLB history to reach the esteemed 40-40 club.
It was one of the very best individual seasons in Cubs history.
The origin story
Through June 24, 2021, the Cubs were sitting in a first-place tie thanks to a roster largely made up of their 2016 World Series heroes. After throwing a combined no-hitter in Dodger Stadium, the Cubs proceeded to lose three straight games. They headed to Milwaukee on June 28 to start a three-game series. They were outscored 41-8 in a Brewers sweep, with Counsell at the helm as Milwaukee's skipper.
This was the start of the end for that 2021 Cubs team, which completely fell apart and eventually saw the front office tear up the 2016 nucleus and move on. Kris Bryant and Anthony Rizzo were traded, as was fan favorite Javier Báez to the Mets in a deal that also included pitcher Trevor Williams. In return came a 19-year-old kid named Pete Crow-Armstrong.
Crow-Armstrong wasn't some obscure tack-on on whom the Cubs got lucky. He had been drafted No. 19 out of high school the year prior. His upside was well known.
Still, he had only six games of professional experience before falling injured that season. There was upside to dream on, but also a lot of unknown.
PCA debuted late in 2023 and looked overmatched at the plate, going 0 for 14 with seven strikeouts. Still, heading into 2024, he was a consensus top-20 prospect in all of baseball. The projections were that he'd be elite in center field, elite on the bases and had a decent chance to become a good hitter. Maybe something like a .275 average, .340 on-base percentage and 15-20 homers would become a normal season.
He showed flashes on offense in 2024, especially given that he was only 22 years old, but failed to live up to expectations.
Then there was the first-half breakout in 2025, followed by a disaster of a second half at the plate. The eye test said he was a totally different hitter. The splits line up:
1st half: .265/.302/.544 2nd half: .216/.262/.372
The poor plate performance carried over into 2026. He was only hitting .224/.314/.362 through May 29. And then, amid "overrated" chants from Cardinals fans in St. Louis, he went deep and took off for the rest of the season.
From that game through the end of the season, Crow-Armstrong hit .308 with an OBP above .400, slugged nearly .700 and clubbed 39 home runs in 104 games. One of the biggest differences has been his grasp of the strike zone, cutting down on swinging at bad pitches and doing damage on strikes.
Sure enough, his walk rate rose from 4.5% last season to 11.4% this year. He reduced the rate at which he swung at pitches outside the strike zone by more than 7 points. He swung roughly 10% less overall. His hard-hit percentage went from 41.6 to 48.5. Again, the formula: Swing less, swing at fewer bad pitches, do more damage when you do swing.
It sounds simple, but it's a difficult adjustment at the big-league level, and many young players never pull it off. PCA did it at age 24 and turned into one of the best players in baseball.
"Absolutely," Crow-Armstrong told CBS Sports when asked if he thought this type of season was possible. "That's what I work for."
A jaw-dropping 2026 season
Crow-Armstrong's 40-40 season made him just the seventh player ever to pull off the feat. He had seven four-hit games this season, leading the majors (Jackson Chourio was second with six).
He led the majors in runs scored. He was sixth in hits and tied for fifth in triples. He tied former Cubs (and current Phillies) slugger Kyle Schwarber for the MLB lead in home runs. He tied for fourth in steals. He led a handful of defensive metrics.
And, despite being a primary leadoff man, PCA finished fourth in the majors in RBI.
The list of primary leadoff men who topped 100 RBI in a season is awfully short. PCA didn't hit leadoff all season, but he racked up 83 RBI in only 107 games from that position. Shohei Ohtani's 84 in 90 games is one of the few seasons with more bulk at a higher rate per game. The record is 107 from Mookie Betts in 2023, and that was in 151 games from the leadoff spot. Still, to finish fourth in RBI despite leading off over 100 times is ridiculous.
Remember that 11-base game? He reached 10 total bases six times this season, tying the MLB record along with 2019 Nelson Cruz (only 1997 Larry Walker, 1940 Johnny Mize and 1933 Jimmie Foxx even had five such games in a season).
How about if we cherry-pick the numbers and go with 45 home runs, eight triples and 30 doubles in a season? Crow-Armstrong did that this year. The others who have done so? Babe Ruth (twice), Lou Gehrig (twice), Jimmie Foxx (three times), Joe DiMaggio and Eddie Mathews. That's it. Mathews and PCA are the only two to get there since integration, and PCA is the only player since 1953.
And even as the bat has leveled up, the defense and baserunning haven't lagged behind at all. He's become an all-around force, and that shows up in WAR. Crow-Armstrong led the majors in both major versions of WAR. In FanGraphs' metric, it wasn't even remotely close: Bobby Witt Jr. finished second among position players at 6.9. PCA had 10.6.
In fact, if we stick with FanGraphs' WAR, the only seasons higher this century than PCA's 2026 are three Barry Bonds seasons and two Aaron Judge seasons. That's it. He's topped the best career mark posted by Albert Pujols, Alex Rodriguez, Mike Trout, Miguel Cabrera, Mookie Betts, Ronald Acuña Jr., Shohei Ohtani and, well, everyone else but Bonds and Judge.
The Cubs have been around since 1876. The only player to post a higher fWAR in a season in franchise history than PCA did this season was Rogers Hornsby in 1929. Yes, this Pete Crow-Armstrong season rated higher via this metric than anything from Ernie Banks, Ron Santo, Billy Williams, Ryne Sandberg and Sammy Sosa.
Again, the defensive and baserunning chops were always going to be there. It's the offensive strides that made him special this season.
What's next?
"That'll be a never-ending process," Crow-Armstrong told CBS Sports earlier this month when asked what improvements his game needs. "I view it as, if I can do this now, I still carry the belief that I have more in me and, yeah, there's always going to be things I can get better at and I would hope that's how my career goes. That would be a very lucky way to be able to experience this game -- just experiencing yourself growing every year. That's really what I've come to notice the most this year is that I've been very aware of growth."
For Crow-Armstrong, everything is about the greater goal: winning, and winning as a team.
"We're here to win baseball games, we're not here to show up and reach individual milestones," he said. "Those just happen by playing good baseball."
He's done plenty of that in 2026. Now the focus will be on helping the Cubs to their first deep playoff run since 2017.
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