This week’s pause to the MLB regular season schedule can’t end soon enough for the Chicago Cubs’ Pete Crow-Armstrong, “the Windy City Wunderkind.”
It has been a heck of a first half for the Cubs and their 23-year-old All-Star center fielder.
Cubs’ fans have much to be excited about. Chicago took two of three games at Yankee Stadium to wrap up the first half, winning Saturday and Sunday, and Crow-Armstrong entered the break on a personal high note. In Sunday’s 4–1 win, Crow-Armstrong, or “PCA” as Chicago’s fan base refers to their new hero roaming Wrigley Field, singled in a run in the top of the seventh.
Coming up clutch has become standard for the third-year player who garnered 3,021,256 votes to be named the National League’s starting center fielder for Tuesday night’s annual Midsummer Classic in Atlanta. Constantly referred to as among the game’s best outfielders, Crow-Armstrong has the Cubs one game ahead of the Milwaukee Brewers in the National League Central standings.
“He’s playing at as high a level that I’ve seen a center fielder play,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell told reporters during a recent postgame press conference.
Few observers saw Crow-Armstrong becoming this good, offensively and defensively, this fast. For months, the Cubs’ outfielder has been regularly talked about as a front-runner for MVP. This past spring training, it was a foregone conclusion for many that the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani would be in line to collect his fourth MVP trophy in the past five seasons. Crow-Armstrong’s 99 hits in 95 games, plus 25 home runs and 27 bases swiped, have him on equal ground with his All-Star teammates.
The New York Mets traded Crow-Armstrong, their first-round pick on the 2020 draft, to the Cubs on July 30, 2021, for shortstop Javier Baez and pitcher Trevor Williams. That turned out to be the best deal made by Chicago over the past six years. Baez lasted only 47 games with the Mets before electing to pursue a new employer through free agency in 2022. Williams pitched in just 40 games as a Met in 2021 and 2022, 121.3 total innings, before moving on to the Washington Nationals.
With the Cubs winning the 2016 World Series over the Cleveland Indians (now Guardians), their first championship since 1908, and rebounding so far this season from finishing 10 games out of first place in the Central in 2024, expectations are high for postseason action in Chicago.
Coming out of Los Angeles prep school Harvard-Westlake in 2020, Crow-Armstrong hit a roadblock. During the pandemic, all minor league baseball was canceled. A half dozen games into 2021, after just 24 at-bats while playing for the Class-A Florida State League’s St. Lucie Mets, Crow-Armstrong suffered a right-shoulder injury. He was traded while recovering from surgery. The rest is happy history for the Cubs and their fans.
In the 2022 and 2023 seasons, Crow-Armstrong breezed through Single-A, Double-A, and Triple-A ball before getting called up at the end of the 2023 season for 13 games. Last season, Crow-Armstrong stole 27 bases in the 123 games that he appeared in. He has already equaled that amount in 2025. Chasing down line drives, clubbing line drives, and being a danger on the base paths for opposing teams, Crow-Armstrong remains a highlight reel in motion.
Sharing the starting All-Star Game outfield with Ronald Acuna Jr. of the Atlanta Braves and fellow Cub Kyle Tucker promises to be an evening Crow-Armstrong will remember the rest of his career. It’s not far-fetched to believe that there are more All-Star Game appearances coming.
Getting through the players’ introductions on Tuesday at Atlanta’s Truist Park, and the game, will interrupt Crow-Armstrong’s concentration on the regular season. But the Cubs’ center fielder will be eager to get back to the bigger picture—bringing postseason play to Wrigleyville for the first time since 2020.
