The Cubs held at No. 5 in this week’s MLB.com Power Rankings, which is about right for a team that has spent most of the past two weeks losing. The interesting part of their entry has nothing to do with where they landed. It’s the note that Pete Crow-Armstrong is on track for something the franchise has seen three times in a century.
Cubs position players have posted a 10-WAR season exactly three times in the last 100 years. Rogers Hornsby did it in 1929. Ernie Banks did it in 1959. Sammy Sosa did it in 2001. Crow-Armstrong is on pace to be the fourth, and he is doing it at 24 in his third full season.
MLB.com put the MVP piece bluntly, calling this the week that “Pete Crow-Armstrong isn’t just chasing Shohei Ohtani for MVP, he has passed him” went mainstream.
The Numbers Behind It
Crow-Armstrong sits at 8.3 fWAR to Ohtani’s 7.0, which includes everything Ohtani did on the mound before the Dodgers shut him down from pitching. Baseball Reference has a narrower gap in the same direction, 7.8 to 6.8. He has 33 home runs, most on the team, and he has been at or near the top of the league all year in outs above average.
The offense is what changed. He came into this season with a career .722 OPS and a reputation as a glove-first center fielder who could not hit enough. Since June 1 he has hit .313/.419/.683. Mechanical adjustments turned a bottom-of-the-order defender into the most valuable player in the National League.
He has also been better in the moments that decide games. His 5.32 win probability added leads the NL. Ohtani is at 2.98.
None of this is settled. Five weeks remain, Ohtani could get back on the mound in September, and Crow-Armstrong’s expected numbers suggest a hitter due for some regression. He went 4-for-36 in one stretch this month, which is what a cold week looks like for a player carrying a lineup.
The Rest of the Top of the Board
Milwaukee is No. 1 for the first time this season after spending the year behind the Dodgers, who held the top spot for two months. The Braves and the Cubs each had a turn up there earlier, the Cubs for one week back in May.
The Yankees are right behind Chicago at No. 6 and just lost Giancarlo Stanton for what is likely the rest of the year. He strained his left calf while rehabbing his right one. He has played 101 regular-season games over the past two seasons.
Chicago is 75-56 and five back of Milwaukee in the Central with a comfortable wild-card cushion. The ranking will take care of itself if the Cubs start winning series again. What they have in center field is the more durable story.
