Twenty-eight years after Sammy Sosa beat Mark McGwire in a National League MVP race for the ages, the Cubs’ all-time home run leader offered some prophetic words of encouragement for Chicago’s newest MVP contender. As part of the Cubs’ 150th anniversary celebration, Sosa and other members of the franchise’s all-time roster were in attendance Saturday at Wrigley Field as they watched Pete Crow-Armstrong launch three home runs against the Reds. It was the latest statement in a season full of them for the phenom center fielder, who has leapfrogged Shohei Ohtani as the heavy MVP favorite.
"Sammy did say I was going to hit three today," Crow-Armstrong said afterward. "Sammy Sosa told me I was going to hit three, and I hit three, so put that on the record." Crow-Armstrong is a player built for the spotlight. Even on a weekend devoted to the greatest Cubs of all time, it was PCA who again took center stage.
As an encore, he added two more blasts on Sunday, giving him five home runs on the weekend and 38 on the season, a total that trails only Kyle Schwarber for the most in MLB. Crow-Armstrong also joined Sosa, Alfonso Soriano, Ryne Sandberg and Andre Dawson as the only players in franchise history with at least 14 home runs in a calendar month. Crow-Armstrong, MLB’s leader in wins above replacement, has catalyzed his team with leadoff blasts — he has nine this year, trailing only Soriano for the most in a season in franchise history — and dazzled with walk-off winners.
He has astounded with highlight-reel defensive plays, leading all outfielders in outs above average, and amazed with his speed, ranking second in MLB in both steals (32) and triples (seven). He has also hit for the cycle, among his many accomplishments this season. But it’s his consistency as a complete offensive force that might have him winning MVP over Ohtani, something no player has done since Aaron Judge’s 62-homer season in 2022.
Even a couple of months ago, the thought that anyone could push Ohtani for the award seemed far-fetched, if not outright impossible. Ohtani seemed to have his eye on winning his first ever Cy Young Award in his return as a full-time two-way player this year. When he puts his mind to something, it tends to happen.
At the end of May, Ohtani was pitching himself into the conversation with a 0.82 ERA through nine starts. But his performance began to suffer after he started dealing with knee pain in early June. By the end of the month, his ERA had doubled.
Still, even as his Cy Young chances started to fade, it was hard to imagine anyone standing in the way of him winning a fifth MVP award. On July 3, Ohtani had a 1.79 ERA as a pitcher and a .927 OPS as a hitter. But he has not pitched since that date, due to left knee discomfort that required an injection over the All-Star break and a recurring right bicep problem.
The lingering issues have not stopped him from being a mainstay in the Dodger lineup, but they continue to prevent his return to the mound. They also opened a door for another MVP contender. "If you guys want to talk about all this back and forth, I really should go get in the lab and start pitching," Crow-Armstrong quipped a few weeks ago.
He probably won’t have to resort to that, the way he is hitting so dependably now. The Cubs’ star outfielder demonstrated his upside last season in an All-Star and Gold Glove campaign while finishing ninth in NL MVP voting. But his production ebbed and flowed.
He had an .888 OPS in May, a .771 OPS in June and a .984 OPS in July before falling off a cliff last August (.446). He slashed just .216/.262/.372 in the second half of 2025. The peaks and valleys were part of the package for a young player still adjusting to the big-league game.
He chased too often (only four qualified players swung at a higher rate of pitches out of the zone), reached base too seldomly (he had the fifth-lowest walk rate and on-base percentage in MLB) and struggled too much against southpaws (.595 OPS) to sustain his success. This year, he looks like a different force altogether, not unlike the superstar jump Bobby Witt Jr. took from his age 23 to 24 season. After a slow start to the year, Crow-Armstrong has produced an OPS over 1.000 over each of his last three months.
Even beyond the consistent production, there are underlying reasons to believe this steady uptick can endure. He has become a much more selective hitter, lowering his swing rate by more than 10% and his chase rate by more than 7% from last season. Those are both the largest drops among all qualified hitters this year.
His walk rate, meanwhile, has swelled from 4.5% last year to 11.5% this year, the biggest jump in MLB, and it’s not at the expense of driving the baseball. In fact, he’s swinging harder and mashing the ball better than ever before. Crow-Armstrong raised his hard-hit rate from 41.6% last year to 48.8% this season, the second-highest jump in the sport behind only Bryson Stott.
It took some physical adjustments to get here, some more obvious than others. Most notably, Crow-Armstrong has dropped his hands lower before getting into his load. He has also moved farther back in the box and closer to the plate, especially against lefties, while narrowing the distance between his feet in his stance.
It all seems to be working, allowing him to cover pitches better on the outer edge while still being able to turn on pitches and get to his pull-side power. His OPS against lefties has jumped nearly 400 points from last year to this year (.978). By wRC+, he went from the seventh-worst hitter against lefties last year to the seventh-best this year.
The end result is an all-around force capable of pushing Ohtani for the league’s greatest individual honor. Crow-Armstrong leads MLB in fielding run value, Statcast’s metric for capturing a player’s defensive performance. He also leads the NL in batting run value and is tied for fifth in MLB in baserunning run value, demonstrating his ability to impact the game in myriad ways.
The only thing he doesn’t do is pitch, but neither does Ohtani at the moment as the Dodger superstar’s MVP case hits a lull. Ohtani was expected to be back on the mound Sunday or Tuesday to begin his build-up toward October, but his knee and biceps issues haven’t fully subsided. It’s now unclear when he’ll return to the mound.
"I don’t think he’s 100%," Roberts told reporters this weekend. Ohtani’s offensive performance has also declined since he started ramping his throwing program back up. After a weeks-long break from throwing, Ohtani threw his first bullpen session on Aug.
14. In the 15 games before that date, he had a 1.119 OPS. Over the 15 games since that date, he has a .716 OPS.
Meanwhile, Crow-Armstrong’s push for MVP is full steam ahead. His achievements seem to get more spectacular by the day. On Saturday, two of his three home runs came off left-hander Andrew Abbott.
On Sunday, his leadoff homer came off All-Star Chase Burns. His 14 home runs in August were the most by any player 24 or younger in a calendar month since Ken Griffey Jr. in May 1994. Crow-Armstrong has already become the first player in franchise history to record back-to-back 30-homer, 30-stolen base seasons.
He’s now just two homers and eight steals short of a 40-40 season, a feat that has only been accomplished six times in MLB history — most recently during Ohtani’s 50-50 campaign in 2024 — and never by a Cubs player. While Ohtani’s having another incredible year and doing something no other player can (.909 OPS as a hitter, 1.79 ERA as a pitcher), what Crow-Armstrong is accomplishing in Chicago could be historic. The club’s all-time leader in fWAR for a single season is Rogers Hornsby (11.0), a total that’s not out of reach for Crow-Armstrong (9.3) if he can keep this pace up.
Of course, one month remains to sort everything out. Maybe Ohtani, focusing solely on hitting, goes on a tear. Maybe he returns to the mound and reminds everyone why the value he provides as a two-way titan can’t be matched.
As of this moment, though, Crow-Armstrong holds the edge in nearly every offensive category (Ohtani has a slight lead in OBP) as well as WAR and stolen bases while also bringing elite defense at a premium position every day. And if he does become the first Cubs player to take home MVP honors since Kris Bryant in 2016, we might look back at this past weekend as the defining moment, when Crow-Armstrong put on a show for the ages while Ohtani’s return to the mound was put on hold. Rowan Kavner is an MLB writer for FOX Sports.
He previously covered the L.A. Dodgers, LA Clippers and Dallas Cowboys. An LSU grad, Rowan was born in California, grew up in Texas, then moved back to the West Coast in 2014.
Follow him on X at @RowanKavner.
